Beauty is in the Eye
by Ione
Summary: Christine's life was ordered, structured. She had a plan, and she was sticking with it. He had no plan; no order. Erik's life was chaos, but he had one thing she didn't. His heart. Doctor Christine and Patient Erik; a psychological fairy tale.
1. Prologue

Christine Dale was defined by her work and her family. She was 22, and frank about it. She had a strange last name, which she would thank you very much not to mispronounce. Her curly brown hair had long since been clipped, curtailed, and brought to heel. She lived to save lives and help people.

Christine Dale was a very different girl from what she had used to be. In the fifteen years following her father's death, she had forgotten how to day-dream. If you mentioned the very word to her, she would laugh in your face. She echoed her mother, and told you it was a waste of time that didn't result in anything productive.

Christine Dale had had a series of relationships with normal boys. All right, so they were a touch more polite than most boys, but she did have her standards, after all, and she didn't take anything from rude men. In her mind, though, she was well on her way to finding 'Mr. Right'. In her mind, finding that elusive thing was just another thing to cross off her checklist (she actually did have a checklist made out), and she was steadily approaching the right combination of characteristics in her men. There had been Rob, who was slightly vulgar, Mark, who was a little too stupid, and then Jason, who had been just a tad bit too messy. Yes, it was almost a matter of time before she found the right man, and settled down. Another check on her list.

She was very happy now, and very glad for that fact. Ten years of being irritable and upset can wear away at one's mind, and to say that Christine had been an ill-tempered child after her father's death was the understatement of the century. But, right before she had gone off to college, she had made a concerted effort to clamp down on the unwelcome memories that made her so frustrated, and that included expunging the memories of her father. Well, so be it. She was much happier now.

She lived in a pocket-sized apartment right off campus. Oh, she was in graduate school now. She was training to be a doctor, so she could probably call it medical school, really. In fact, she had just begun her residential period in the local hospital. She only treated outpatients though, generally speaking, because her area of specialty was the counseling of people with eating disorders. Yes, she treated anorexia and bulimia nervosa. There was the occasional manic-depressive (bipolar, rather), and sometimes she took shifts with the nurses to manage changing bandages and such. But generally speaking, she was a counselor.

Actually, med school was superfluous. She didn't need this much education to be a talk therapist. But she wanted it. She wanted to know everything, so that she could save lives and help people. It was what she lived for, after all.

Anyway, back to her apartment. It was scrupulously neat, at all times. If she tracked in dirt on a late night at school, she swept it back out. Her bookshelf was a curious mélange of self-help books, medical journals, and the occasional bestseller.

Christine Dale's mother was still alive, thankfully, and the poor woman had put up with enough from her to qualify her for sainthood. Christine also had a step-father and a little eight-year-old half-brother. She loved them all. To complete this resume, she also had one best friend (Meg, blond hair blue eyes) and one rival (Carlotta, red hair green eyes).

The long and the short of all this is as follows: Christine Dale had not had anything new happen in her life for the last fifteen years. She was not prepared for anything new either, no matter how much she might insist that she was.

It was the understatement of the millennia to say that that was not exactly what was going to happen to her.


	2. Monday Mornings

Monday, Monday. For some, it was an unwelcome return to the grindstone, a forced activity that most despised. For Christine, it was a liberation from the pointless nothings of the weekend, the phone conversations that dragged on with nothing being said, the evenings out with nothing for company but booze. For her, the only good part of the weekend was family dinner on Sunday. Other than that, the less said of the weekend, the better.

Nadia, the receptionist, handed her the roster of duties for the day. Christine greeted her, slipping on a new white coat, which was hanging in the hallway, and glanced over her schedule. She was counseling the little Knorr girl again today…the poor kid had had anorexia nervosa since she was 8 years old. Five years and almost constant counseling later, she was still continually hovering just above the danger zone. Christine was very close to just recommending her to one of the institutions where she could receive constant care, but she had gained a half-pound last week and she was not about to give up hope yet.

After that, she usually took care of several other chronics. There was one girl, Dana Whaler, who was recently in for therapy for bulimia, and several other adults for the same problem as well.

But the name on her roster was different this time. A new name. Erik. Christine was taken aback. She ordered a cup of strong coffee from the machine in the hall (she hadn't had much sleep last night) and tried again.

Nope. No last name this time either. Typo, her logical brain told her. No one could possibly get treatment without insurance, let alone a last name. Well, almost no one could. If you were rich enough, then you could pay out of pocket, but who even bothered? Even the ability to pay straight cash was becoming rarer and rarer…most hospitals demanded insurance, for safety's sake alone.

She sighed, anticipating a long, drawn-out conversation with her supervisor, but a quick glance at her watch told her that wouldn't be a possibility until just before her first meeting with this enigmatic Erik.

Well, there was no time to think about it now. She had to hurry to meet the Knorr family on time. The two parents were visiting today, and she wanted to refresh her memory on the girl's file, because her parents always asked the most particular questions.

"Rebecca," Christine's voice was tired and dispirited, "doesn't this Erik guy have a medical history?"

The brunette woman looked at her, puzzled, and then groaned. "Didn't Nadia give you the file?"

"I only got his name on my roster," Christine offered her another cup of coffee, which was gratefully accepted, "and nothing else."

"Damn." Rebecca Carlisle swore. She had a very difficult job, managing both professional doctors and graduate students, plus balancing all the undergraduate programs that happened each day in her hospital. "Carlotta must not have given her the file. That girl, I swear…" Her voice trailed off. Knowing how the situation lay between Carlotta and Christine, she was loathe to criticize either of them. It would just be adding gunpowder to their stored ammunition.

She rose quickly and unlocked the master file case behind her desk. "Here," she said, handing over a thick dossier, "take that for today, I'll have Nadia make another copy if you drop it off as you leave tonight."

Christine scanned the first few pages quickly, irritated that she did not have the time to examine the file in depth, and said, almost absently, "Carly had this guy before me?"

"Yeah." Rebecca's attention was already on some documents lying spread on her desk, "This guy has been bouncing from department to department for years; apparently, no one's ever made a proper diagnosis. He's an enigma, for several reasons that you'll shortly see. His condition since he came to us has long since stabilized, but I really think that he enjoys watching us flounder. He's a difficult guy; I worked with him the longest, I suppose. I thought Carly, having so much experience in this field, would be able to get close to the truth, but apparently he couldn't stand her, and requested someone else."

Christine smirked. "Yes, well, that sounds like our Carly."

Rebecca fixed her with a firm look. "Christine…"

The smaller woman shook her head and looked back down at the file, the smile slowly fading from her face.

The two of them read in respective silence for several more minutes until Rebecca spoke again.

"Christine," the other woman's head shot up, "This guy is difficult to work with. I picked you for this job, even though you have several other cases, because I think that you've got the thing that can get past his defenses. You're sweet and sympathetic, and I think that's what he needs. But trust me, keep your relationship professional! The idea of being close friends with this guy will be the first thing that occurs to you to get past his mental barriers…don't try it. I did, and I don't think I'll ever be able to…" Rebecca's face was distant and disturbed; Christine was instantly concerned.

But abruptly, she seemed to recover. "Well, anyway…" she chuckled weakly, shaking her head, "just be careful, okay? Now get out of here," her face was flustered as she shuffled the papers on her desk, "I've got tons of work to finish up before tonight."

Christine quietly left the room. She checked her watch, and ordered another cup of coffee before she went to the staff room to review the file in the fifteen minutes before her appointment with the elusive Erik.

The man's file was perhaps the largest she had ever seen. Two inches thick, stuffed with doctor's reports, psychological analyses, medical records and medicinal history…the list went on and on.

The first glance through the files still left nothing but a blank in her mind. She couldn't understand why this man was being given over to her care…she treated weight or mental hiccups, not severe psychosis! His problem seemed, from all that she read, to be _much_ more severe than what she was used to. If she had had say over this man's fate, she would have sent him to the doctors who treated things like…multiple personality or identity dismorphic.

But then again, no one seemed to even have a clear guess of what was wrong with the man. He'd been through every psychological profiling possible, and yes, while there were common elements, there was too little to make a clear estimate of his problem.

'Insecurity…violence…paranoia…eccentricity'

Those were the four words repeated most often, but what they pointed to, apparently no one could tell. Paranoia and violence corresponded well enough, but the word eccentricity was helplessly vague.

She had only glanced over about half the file before another glance at her watch showed her that she was already two minutes late. Snarling to herself and downing the last drizzles of coffee, Christine grabbed the file and hightailed it to the room where Erik must already be waiting. If there was something that Christine absolutely despised, it was being late.


	3. The Appointment

The door clicked shut behind her and it was only several years in patient treatment and the possession of a great bedside manner that made her able to resist a violent start when she first laid eyes on him.

Erik was seated at ease in her usual chair, the comfortable leather wheeled chair that made her job a little more comfortable. One leg was easily draped over the other, and his arms were folded. As their eyes met, he made an infernal _tsk, tsk_ noise with his tongue. She felt her face flush, and that in turn made her fumble for her papers.

"I do apologize, sir," she said, realizing that she had no idea what his last name was, "I was held up with another patient."

He smiled and rose, gesturing her to her own seat, which she took without quite realizing what she was doing. He contented himself with one of the small wooden chairs that rested against the wall in the examination room. Christine had been expecting an answer, but when she was greeted with silence, she realized that she was staring, and, blushing again, she turned her gaze to the file on her lap.

She had almost no idea about how to start this conversation. She covered her discomfort by flipping rapidly through the morass of papers, and it was around thirty seconds later that she realized she would never learn anything about this guy unless it came from his own mouth.

"I must admit, sir, that I was less than adequately prepared for this meeting." Honesty was usually a good thing to start out with, and her awkwardness increased tenfold when she looked into his face. Well…

"Your previous doctor, Dr. Guidicelli, did not supply me with your case history until approximately ten minutes ago, so you'll forgive me if I'm a little flummoxed."

_Flummoxed_? Cool it Christine, this is an examination, not the SATs.

Another small quirk at the corner of his mouth.

"Quite understandable."

_Oh_…

"Dr. Guidicelli did impress me as not being quite…professional, shall we say."

Christine had to stop herself once again from staring. _If you spoke like that around her, I think I can understand why_!

"Well," Christine said, turning her attention once more to the papers on her lap, "why don't I have you tell me something about yourself. I would hate to waste your time by just reviewing these papers."

She nearly bit her tongue as his eyes sparkled with amusement. Great, she'd overbalanced from zealous schoolgirl to kindergarten teacher. She'd never been this off-balance around a patient before, and it was really telling in her manner.

"What can I tell you about myself that is not covered by those eminent physicians who have had the benefit of examining me?" He said, gesturing to the folder in her lap. "I would hate to make a mistake in my own diagnosis, especially should it mean wasting your own valuable time."

Christine felt the beginnings of hyperventilation settling in. Instinct told her that he was playing with her, dangling clues and witticisms high above her head, waiting for her to make a leap that would make her appear at best ridiculous and at worst inept. She stood, and placed the folder on the counter behind her, taking out a clipboard and attaching a questionnaire to it. Usually she despised questionnaires, considering them to be Freudian (whom she hated) and very, _very_ graduate student. But the moments facing away from _him_ were absolutely necessary. Her breathing slowed, and she once again took a tenuous control of her fluttering heart.

_I've been trained to do this,_ she thought. _He's smart, but he's obviously disturbed. I can help him. I know I can._

Her smile was in place when she turned towards him and sat.

"I'd like to ask you a few simple questions, just to get the two of us used to each other, all right?" she said, trying not to listen to her own silly platitudes, "It's often hard for a new patient and a doctor to become well acquainted, and I would like you to be able to trust me. If there is anything about_ me_ that you would like to know, I'll do my best to answer your questions, all right?"

"Very well, Dr. Dale."

Her lips tightened. "It's pronounced 'dah-leh', actually."

He looked her directly in the eyes. "Why did it bother so that I made a very simple mistake?"

Damn.

She tried to pass it off with a bit of light laughter. "You try going through elementary, middle, and high school with every teacher you ever had saying your name the wrong way!" She scratched some nonsense on the questionnaire, hoping to break his interest in the subject. When she looked up, his eyes were no less intense.

"Did your mother take the name of her new husband?"

Her heart skipped a beat. "H-How did you know that my mother had remarried?"

He nodded towards the two pictures that she kept on the counter. "You have a picture of the man who is obviously your father by himself. Then, a picture of the woman who is your mother with another husband and a new child. Tell me, do you feel obligated to your father to carry on his name? If you got married, I suppose you would insist on keeping your maiden name, wouldn't you? Or maybe you would be more modern and hyphenate? That might be more likely; you do seem to believe most strongly in compromise."

Christine was aware that her throat was very, very dry.

She smiled. "A fair bit of perception. I suppose years of psycho-analysis rubs off on one?"

He placed his hands against his chest and said, "A hit, my Lady, a most palpable hit!"

Her smile broadened. "_Romeo and Juliet_!"

He nodded, smile matching her own. "Indeed. I was not sure that you would know."

"I have an Associate's degree in theatre."

If she could have seen his eyebrows, she was almost certain that they would have been raised in astonishment.

"Pre-med and theatre? A rather…eclectic mix."

"Medical school is my passion," she said concisely, "but I'd be lying if I said I'd never had dreams of the spotlight. What girl doesn't, really?"

He nodded, his eyes drifting, for the first time, away from her face. She felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted off her shoulders, but almost as soon as she felt that relief, she realized that _she_ should have been questioning _him_.

"It seems we have no time in which to continue our discussion."

She jumped again at the sound of his voice and glanced at her right wrist. Damn! Where had the half-hour gone?

"Well," she said, feeling the blood rush to her face, "I will need to see you again. Please call the office or stop by on your way out to schedule a new appointment. If we continue to work together, maybe we can consider some kind of weekly regimen."

"Christine," he said, taking her hand and bending over it, "since I am sure we shall continue to meet, I say 'farewell' and not 'good bye'."

He took his black blazer from the back of her chair and, swinging it over his shoulder, left the room.

Christine sank down into her chair, wringing her hands anxiously together. She shivered when she realized she had never told him her name.

She busied herself immediately then, straightening papers in his file and throwing away her questionnaire, sliding chairs back into place and trying desperately to regain her ruffled calm. Of course he was perceptive, of course he was suave. He was afraid, he was insecure, he was nothing more than a man. Nothing more than that.

Christine nearly burst out laughing when she passed the door of her little office, realizing that the plague affixed next to the window had her full name on it. The relief she felt was frightening in its intensity. She giggled and braced herself against the doorjamb, feeling rather as if she could fall over from the strain.

_What a little idiot_, she thought scornfully. _Getting worked up because he could make a couple of close guesses that anyone with a whole brain could manage to come up with. Overwrought and under-prepared. Damn Carly. I should never have gone into that appointment blind!_

Oh, yes, tonight was a night for the bottle of very expensive brandy that she kept in her pantry. It had been one of those days


	4. Meltdown

Christine didn't realize it, but by the time she got home that night, she was on the point of hyperventilation. She forgot to lock the door behind her, she shucked off her shoes and coat, dropping her keys with a clatter on the floor. She walked straight into the kitchen and plucked the brandy out of the highest cabinet. She poured herself two fingers into a glass and downed one great swallow.

The sharp liquor burned the back of her throat and loosened that terrible lump that had been growing there all day. Unfortunately, once the ice melted, the tears flowed freely. The glass fell from her hand and shattered on the floor, and it was only when she was picking fragments up with a dishtowel and choking on her tears that Christine understood that she was having a panic attack.

Once she had made the categorization, it was easy for her to sit with her back against the counter and lean her head between her knees. Once she had isolated her problem, dealing with it became that much easier.

"Calm down Christine, calm down Christine," she said, over and over to herself as the world spun a little bit hazily about her. "It's okay, it's okay, you're all right, you're all right."

The brandy tasted horrible in her throat; technically speaking, she shouldn't have knocked it back like that. Right now, probably the best option for her would be to have a long, hot bath. Maybe with lavender scented bubbles. Yes. That always helped her relax.

The ground was still not quite steady, so she crawled to the bathroom (garishly done in bright green tiles) and worked the faucet, turning it all the way to the left, so the usually tepid water would heat a little bit faster.

Christine, finding that the world was still not stable, lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. It too, was green. Green, green, green. The color of vomited salad. Yes, of course she knew what salad upchuck looked like.

"Ugh." She _felt_ like losing her salad right now. Emotional upset, that's all it is. _Why_ had he thrown her so terribly off-balance?

Water trickled over her arm. _Damn._ She reached over and turned off the faucet, but it was too late to stop some more water slopping over the edge of the tub. She reached in and pulled the plug, watching as the water swirled lazily down the drain. When it had gone down far enough, she stripped and pulled herself over the edge and into the water.

The moment her muscles started to relax, the tears that had been held back by brute force started to flow yet again. This time it was no outburst; it was only a slow leak that refused to be stopped. Her body was shaken time and time again by small sobs.

Why, why, why, why, why?

When she closed her eyes, his black mask was superimposed as a brilliantly white retinal image on her lids. She shivered. It was so alien, so _different_, and she could hardly stop herself from imagining all of the possible reasons he could have for donning it in the first place.

No wonder 'eccentric' was one of the defining words. And yet, why had no one made notice of this in his case file? Why did everyone skirt around the issue? Why hadn't they given her some kind of warning before she walked in and faced the black slate that was his excuse for a _face_!

She shivered and sank down underneath the water, where the fluorescent light wavered slightly against the bloody…green…ceiling.

The water was cold. Her knees didn't fit in the tub. Her shoulders shuddered again and again.

This was maddening. Christine drained the tub and turned on the shower, scalding herself with the sudden torrent of hot water. She scrubbed her hair and her skin, washing down to the soles of her feet and spending precious moments, moments that she usually never took, to soak in the glorious heat and just _relax_.

Why was she all of a sudden thinking of her father?

Charles Dale had been—yes Christine, _had been_—the best person in the entire world. Funny, smart, artistic, sensitive…there just weren't enough adjectives to describe him with. If she closed her eyes she could still remember the way his beard felt when he ticked her with it. Over the pounding pulse of the water, she could hear the joyful, mournful, lively tones of his violin. There was a song for every occasion; this was one of the things that he taught everyone he met.

"Daddy…Daddy…" Christine whispered, and she leaned her forehead against the misty green tiles, gripping her shower caddy with both hands in a painful embrace. She had to stop the memories, the therapist had said. The memories would tear her apart. The scars would never heal. Christine was being torn apart, inch by inch, starting in her heart and radiating to all the places in her body, from the tips of her hair to the ends of her toenails.

She sobbed again. Everything hurt. Hurt, hurt, hurt!

"Daddy!" she cried, beating her hands against the wall. Each shock of pain reverberated through her numbing arms. The academic part of her brain told her that she was burning herself, but she couldn't bring herself to step out of the shower or change the water temperature. Maybe fire would be the way. She'd tried to deaden the pain with repression, with concentration, with community service. Maybe she had to try something new. Maybe flame would make her numb, once and for all.

Her mother had loved him. Loved him, loved him, loved him. And yet she had contented herself with sex, sex and children, not two years after his death. Christine had never made it out of that grave. Had she been able, she might have died with him.

Her hand, working with a mind of its own, reached out and shut off the water. Slowly, slowly, Christine turned to face the foggy mirror. As she stepped out of the shower, a swipe of her hand revealed her for what she had done to herself. One side of her was red as a lobster. Mascara was running in messy chunks down her cheeks, and her own brown eyes stared at her blankly from under her wild, messy, short curls.

Her father would have been so sad if he'd known what she'd done with her hair. She lifted one hand and ran it through the clumped mess. He had always loved her hair in its long spiral curls. It had taken her an entire life to grow out that hair; it had never been cut, only trimmed. What had she done with that? She had butchered it, hacked it away, and had kept it controlled, straightened when she could. What would he have said?

Naked, Christine walked to the living room. She picked up the phone and dialed the hospital. She heard her detached voice speaking into the answering machine. She was sick. She would not be able to come in on the next day. She knew that Marie could take her patients for one day. She was sorry.

She took a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around her hair. Then she went into the bedroom and lay down. She expected that sleep would not come, but the soothing cool of her sheets against her skin was irresistible, and she was asleep before she could remember that she had left her apartment in shambles.


	5. Confessions and Longing

"Good God, Christine Dale, what have you done to your apartment?"

"I felt like a change, Meg. Now are you going to stare or are you going to help?"

Meg shook her head and put the sack of groceries she'd brought on the table. "I suppose I'll help, but it'll help _me_ if you tell me what the hell you're doing."

"I needed a change. I got sick of looking at the same kind of apartment every single day. It's _boring_, Meg!"

"Well halle-freaking-lujah and praise the lord!! I've been trying to get you to paint it for ages!" Meg ditched her coat, rolled up her sleeves and grabbed a paintbrush, dipping it in the gallon jug of vibrant royal blue paint that her friend was currently smearing all over the walls of her bedroom.

It was no exaggeration, Meg Kelly thought viciously as she slathered paint over the unassuming crème colored walls, that she had been trying furiously to get Christine to change. Change _something_, at least, about her tightly controlled, narrow little life. Meg loved Christine dearly, because she could see somewhat past the ice-princess act and see the person who was behind, scared and cowering and lonely, but the way she avoided _any_ kind of extremes sometimes drove her nuts. Honestly, Meg was happy seeing blue paint on a neutral wall, and would wait until Christine went insane again to push her into going out to a club and having more than one drink this time.

Christine pulled out a CD and popped it into the player, turning up the volume higher than was strictly sensible (for her, at least) and she and Meg started singing badly to 80s pop. Well, Christine wasn't as bad as Meg was, but who was counting?

After they put on the first coat of paint, barely a half-hour's work considering the size of her room, Meg and Christine camped out with a bottle of champagne in the middle of the floor, discussing where to place the furniture, since Christine seemed adamant that nothing in the room should remain the same. Meg's brain was afire with possibilities, for new furniture, for new bedding, for a romantic, feminine feel that was missing from Christine's rather utilitarian style of design.

The fact that Christine was totally into whatever changes Meg suggested was what first tipped Meg off that something serious was afoot. The only way a person could really get to like Christine Dale, after all, was if that person happened to have some insight into Christine's true character. And Meg knew that Christine was shaking inside, trembling with fear and trying to get control over it in the only way she knew how.

Meg had not known Christine before the death of her father; had, in fact, only known her for the last year or so, when they'd both met in Abnormal Psychology and afterwards been assigned to the same hospital for residency. But she had heard stories, and, by pure dint of stubbornness, had managed to get closer to Christine than anyone else had been probably since her father's death. Something about Christine, the destructive sadness and the even more destructive activity crushing all life and animation from her character made Meg reach out instinctively to protect.

And it wasn't like Christine was a bore, either. There was just something artificial about her character that you needed to look beyond, but not want to take apart. Walking on eggshells would be a good analogy. Or broken glass. Or anything fragile that untoward force could hurt e.g., bull in china shop.

Meg ripped open a package of strawberries and offered them to Christine, who took one, swirled it around in her champagne flute, and popped it whole into her mouth.

"I loved this color when I was a kid." She said softly, gesturing to the walls. "Dad…" her voice caught, "Dad painted the constellations on my walls in glow-in-the-dark ink when he first read me the legends behind them. I'd fall asleep to them every night."

Hoo, boy. This was another one of them 'tread carefully' moments. Meg usually fell back onto stupid humor, which, thankfully, she was well supplied with.

"You're lucky light doesn't bug you when you're trying to sleep. I swear, next time my roommate drives up at 2:15 in the morning I'm going to kill her!"

Christine gave a chuckle, but it didn't reach either her mouth or her eyes. Meg twirled her glass around idly, buying time.

"Christine, what happened? Why didn't you come to the hospital on Tuesday?"

"I wasn't feeling well."

The glib lie would have fooled anyone. Anyone who wasn't expecting it, that is. Christine was such a talented actress that most people took her at face value.

"You never miss a day, not for any reason, Miss Dale," Meg applied careful pressure, veiled in teasing tones, "you met a guy, didn't you, and played hooky!"

The one thing that couldn't possibly have happened, Meg had thought. But Christine went white. Then red. Then burst out crying. Not the reaction Meg had expected.

"I can't…I can't stop, Meg!" She cried, reaching out to her friend and spilling champagne on the carpet. "Ever since I saw him, I can't stop remembering…and it hurts, Meg, and I don't want to…I don't want to…" her vehemence dwindled into heartbreaking whispers and Christine bent double, until she touched her forehead to the carpet, with arms folded tightly to her chest.

"Oh, God, Christine!" Meg was truly frightened, as she'd never seen Christine like this before, "What's happened?"

But Christine wasn't a therapist for nothing. She took several precious moments to calm her breathing, dry her tears, and organize her thoughts. Meg simmered impatiently, wondering how bad things could really be to put her friend in this state. As much as Meg wanted Christine back in the land of the living, the process actually frightened her.

"I met this man in a session on Monday, and I hadn't read his file, hadn't seen his picture…hadn't had time to prep. That was the first problem. And I get there, and it's like…he knows things about me…things that I knew, but done my best to forget. And he knew them…guessed them so easily…Meg…it scares me that other people would now what he knows."

Meg wanted to reassure her friend, but Christine plowed on recklessly.

"And it opened…oh God…it opened everything I'd put away. I'm angry with my mother, angry with myself, angry at the world, with God! Everything I've worked so hard for is gone! I can't settle myself to anything…do you know how hard it was to look at the things that I've done to myself and keep doing them? Keep going to the hospital, keep smiling and lying, working with people to make them better and not be better myself?"

Meg shook her head and tried to keep her face neutral.

"He had such plans for me. I had such plans for myself." She continued, shaking her head but seeming not quite so hysterical. "I was going to sing…I guess that surprises you, because I never sang after he died…but I'd wanted to, still want to…so much, Meg. And I remember that now and it's killing me!"

She laughed, bitterly, and bit down on the knuckle of her first finger when the tears started to flow again.

"And he knew! Knew everything! He looked at me and I knew that he knew! And he knew it!"

"Who, Christine!" Meg cried, painfully disturbed, "Tell me who!"

"Erik…" she whispered, "Erik saw me and knew me and told me that I was a coward…that I was a coward but he understood that I was a coward and told me it was alright…we met once, only once, but I know that's what he meant. And I'm trying to control the memories, and change what I can…but it's so hard, Meg! It's too hard. I waited too long, I buried too much," she was weeping again, "and I don't think I can get it back."

"Get what back, Christine," Meg asked, gently, "what did you bury?"

"Myself, Meg." The naked honesty in Christine's eyes was shocking. "I've lost myself. And I don't think I can get myself back."


	6. What do I want?

Meg sighed. "Well, hell, Christine, what are you gonna do?"

The straight words seemed to reach into Christine's neurotic mind and steady her. She seemed to truly consider the problem for a few long moments.

Then she sighed too.

"I don't know, Meg," she groaned, setting her glass down and morosely nibbling at a strawberry, "I don't even know what I want!"

"Well…" Meg said, pouring herself some more champagne, "first of all, do you want to keep going at the hospital? Cause I can tell you from experience, if this isn't something you love, then you're just going to hate every single day of it. At the end of my residency, I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep on being a surgeon. But I'm glad I did stick with it. But you've got this whole unresolved career choice thing going on…maybe you should drop out of the program."

Christine groaned. "That'd be just so much wasted _time_ and money, Meg! I've poured myself into this since freshman year of college!"

"But it wasn't what you really wanted to do!" Meg cried, deciding that a little more pressure would be acceptable. "Listen, Christine, do you want to be a doctor or a singer?"

"That sounds so melodramatic."

Meg groaned. "You're kind of missing the point! You're coming up on the end of your three years, at the end of which time you'll be a doctor. That's your life, right there. Now, it certainly isn't set in stone, but come on…I know you, Christine. If you've got a safe haven to retreat to, you won't come out of it. You'll just float along with the current until you finally decide that you've had enough, and that could be years from now."

"I can't leave until I've got my degree. I just can't justify the time and the money spent. My Mom isn't rich, and she's been pouring money into my education. How am I going to tell her that right at the end I'm going to dump it all and just become a musician? How would I pay off my loans, support myself…how would I live?" Christine's face was desperate. "I'm just not that brave, Meg."

Meg shook her head and sighed. She knew what Christine meant. Leaving the comfort of a guaranteed job for the no-guarantees life of a musician would be frightening for anyone. Add to that the fact that Christine had probably been living her life by routine ever since her father died…no wonder it was an insurmountable idea…

"Listen, I can't tell you what to do." Meg began, feeling her way, "Scratch that, I can't even advise you on what to do. But Christine…don't let fear stop you from being happy. If I were you, I'd try and feel your way back into the music scene, even if you still decide to go for the medical degree. Then, no matter what happens, you'll be able to go both ways. If you get an offer to sing somewhere, you can do that, and come back to being a doctor. But don't cut off music entirely…you'll only hurt yourself."

Christine sighed. "Yeah, I understand. I _have_ to keep going for my degree. I _have_ to see my residency through. I just can't justify quitting so late in the game, and I can't abandon the hospital either."

Meg nodded, and poured her friend more champagne. "Drink it, Christine, it'll do you good."

Christine sighed. "I've been having too much recently, Meg. So, thanks but no thanks. I gotta see this one through with a clear head."

Meg smiled and nodded. "Okay. So are we going to do this shopping for your new boudoir or what?"

"Yes." Christine nodded firmly. "The bus should be leaving for the mall soon…I don't think either of us is in a state to drive, anyway."

"Bus is better for the environment anyway," Meg said, giving an exaggerated hiccup.

Later that night, Christine lay under her new filmy white canopy and stared at the deep blue walls. It was time for a good, long think. Though her therapists had told her that probably laying the memories aside would be the best step, obviously she needed to dredge some of them up again.

She stood from the bed and crossed to her closet, shoving open the sticky doors and reaching to the very top shelf. Here lay the shoebox full of things she just couldn't bear to look at after her father had died. She held it and took it back to the bed, wishing that she had something to drink to just take the edge of the pain, but earlier that day she had dumped the rest of the brandy and the two bottles of wine in the house down the drain. She needed to face this with a clear mind.

The dust on top of the shoebox was thick, as she hadn't touched the box for close on to ten years now, and she opened it swiftly and laid it aside.

First she removed the five CDs, the recordings that she and her father had made together…when she'd been dreaming of singing competitions and the stage, and he'd been her proud trainer and accompanist.

She held them in her hands for a long moment, pain lancing so at her heart that she didn't think she could possibly put the first one into the player. But, slowly, her fingers tight with unwillingness, she put it in and put on the headphones.

There was her own voice, young and barely trained, but still a sweet, clear soprano that she could hardly recognize as still being her own. _The Last Rose of Summer_, one of her youthful favorite songs, done with only her voice and a piano accompanying. Had she ever really been that good?

And then, there was her father's voice, as they did a duet on a slightly more adult scale. _Time to Say Goodbye_…obviously, they sounded much less professional than Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman, but still…

Christine felt one tear slide down her cheek, and stopped the CD. Replacing the disc carefully in its case, she moved on to the other items in the box.

The tapes of their practice sessions she knew would be much too painful to hear. She and her father had bantered back and forth between songs, and the sound of his voice, so close and familiar, yet separated by worlds, would be too much to take.

But there were other things to remind her of just how far she'd strayed from her intended path. There was the certificate of honorable mention from her first singing competition, only a few months before her father died…she'd been eight. After that, there had been no competitions…singing became too painful.

Her opera CDs were in here as well. Maria Callas, her one-time role model, smiled up at her on the cover of a CD of romantic arias. Her father had bequeathed to her the honor of carrying on the legacy of the great female vocalists, and this CD had been his last present to her…before…

What was she doing? Wasn't it just better to let all this pain, all these memories, stay in the past? She was a doctor now! Wasn't that just as good a career as a singer? Whose path was she trying to walk? She had been so young when she'd planned on being a singer…didn't every little girl plan on being an actress, or artist, or figure skater? And how many of them actually did that? It wasn't anything to be ashamed of! She'd grown up!

Christine sighed and replaced her dear Maria Callas. There was more to it than that. It wasn't that her father had wanted her to be a singer…she had wanted to be a singer. She had been truly happy when she sang. A pure happiness that she would not feel again. Would not feel again unless she pursued it.

Yes, she did have to finish her residency. She had to go through with that. But afterwards…would it be so selfish if she tried? Tried to regain what she had put aside?

She owed it to her father and herself.

She closed the shoebox and slid it under her bed, turned off the light, and went to sleep.


	7. The Angel in Me

Monday. Again. Christine slid into the routine with trepidation and yet the delightful sensation of _I have a secret._ Although the emotions of the weekend had not yet faded from her mind, her newly-made resolutions had given her an inner strength. Passing Meg near the front door, the two of them exchanged a small smile, and Christine swung on her coat with more enthusiasm than she'd been able to muster for at least the last six months or so on the job.

She did have a secret. She had her music back.

And though she was not yet able to consider it without some material pain in remembering her father, the memory of her father warmed her inside, almost as though he were behind her as she walked, murmuring encouragement interspersed with sprightly notes of his violin.

It hurt. But it hurt in a fresh sort of way. It was the sharp stab of remembrance rather than the dull, pounding ache of suppression that had been hanging in her temples and between her shoulder blades for the last five years.

Moreover, Christine had a _plan_. Most professionals, after all, said that it took only twenty-one days to develop a habit, and Christine had been a maker of to-do lists and plans since before she'd left for college. Having a plan made her feel secure, especially since the territory she knew she was soon to be walking was unlike any she had ventured on before, so she was comforted by the solidity of those four letters: _plan_.

Of course, every plan had a back-up plan. And Christine's plans always had a back-up, back-up plan.

She giggled as she took up her roster. Knorr, Whaler, Knox, Grayson, Winters.

Five consultations, and the hardest one last. This time, though, she was prepared. She had spent quite a bit of her weekend, between demolishing and rebuilding her bedroom, in looking through the man's file. Erik Winters was forty-two years old. His place of birth was Seattle, Washington, but he had resided in quite a good bit of Europe and Asia during his childhood and teenage years, moving back to the States only when he had turned twenty-four. Even as his permanent residence said Westchester, New York, apparently his therapy (started when he was thirty-six) had been punctuated with further visits abroad.

Christine had wondered, as she browsed his file, what sights he had seen, and what experiences he might be able to tell. Her own life, narrow and dull, had been punctuated only by death and its aftermath.

She shook her head. There was no use in thinking of that. After all, what had her father always said?

_Always look forward, Christine, especially when you want most to look back._

Always look forward. Always look forward.

She held that warm presence and mantra inside of her as she stepped into her office and greeted the wan, pale face of Diana Knorr.

During the familiar routine of greetings, weekend enquiries and preliminary weight check, Christine felt the fine line of tension that ran through the room, connecting Mrs. Knorr's twisting hands, Diana's downcast eyes, and her own fine diagnostic sense. She resisted a sigh as she adjusted the weight on the scale, not wanting Diana to turn around and see the result, one way or the other.

As she had assumed, the half pound was gone. So was another half pound. It just wasn't enough.

Helping Diana back onto her perch on the examination bench, Christine found that she just couldn't, in all fairness, keep the truth from either of them any longer. Sitting on her chair and drawing her clipboard onto her knees, she faced them both.

"All right. We have to talk."

When lunchtime finally rolled around, she could have cheered. Setting her pager to its loudest mode, she ordered her food and carried her tray and the stack of papers to a table in the corner. She began the deathly dull routine of signing letters of recommendation and forms of committal. Poor kid. The look of dread certainty in her eyes and been heartbreaking, but at least Diana knew, from years of therapy, what most anorexics never did. If she did not become well, if she didn't admit there was a serious problem, then she would die.

At least Diana knew. Her mother had been the one needing convincing, although her twisting hands had told the truth from the start.

Christine signed the final papers as she lingered over her coffee and stale bagel. It was no use. Continued therapy in an outpatient environment just wasn't enough for her. Diana Knorr needed to be watched twenty-four hours a day. She needed to be taken from school to one of the few institutions in upstate New York with a dedicated medical staff.

It always hurt to face the certainty, as a doctor, that you could not give enough. You could not help enough. Christine had had to face that certainty before, but this time it especially hurt. She had grown very close to little Diana Knorr over the past two years of her residency, having essentially taken over the girl's case the moment she arrived on the scene. Her own parents couldn't have agonized over every ounce lost or rejoiced over every pound gained as she had.

But this would be better for her. Christine signed her name with a flourish and, tucking the papers under her arm, deposited the garbage of her lunch and brought the forms to the desk to be mailed.

Checking her watch, she realized she still had fifteen minutes to prep before her last consultation of the day came in. Mr. Winters. The enigmatic Erik. That had a strangely pleasant ring to it.

Smiling slightly bitterly, the flavor of her defeat over Diana still fresh in her mouth, she retreated to her office and commandeered her chair before he could sit in it. She plopped his folder firmly into a deep drawer and slid it shut. No crutches this time. Taking a new pad of paper from another drawer, she reviewed in her mind the questions that she hoped would off balance him as much as she wanted them too.

The first trick with every patient, no matter what they were being treated for, was to get them to admit that they had a problem. Unless, of course, they were wholly beyond the reach of talk therapy. But that wasn't her line. Erik, it seemed, was somewhat of a tourist. She'd noticed that pattern in his file. He seemed to enjoy the repeated attempts to categorize him, using the strangeness of his mask and the unknown element behind it to poke and prod at the examiners.

What was he after?

Of course, that was what she _really_ wanted to know. Opening with something like that, however, the completely ridiculous "Tell me all your secrets" would never work. He'd eluded others with the skill of a master. Perhaps she could trip him up in some other way.

Rebecca had said to avoid a friendship with him, that friendship was the _seemingly_ easiest way, but led to…what? She had never said. Christine frowned over her dilemma.

Over the weekend, though, she'd decided that the best way to get the better of this case was to play right into Erik's hands. If he wanted to jerk her around and make her seem like an idiot, then she would very obligingly be that idiot. She'd ask blunt questions, and perhaps amuse him to the point where he'd give blunt answers.

She uncapped a pen and tapped it against her pad. The thrill of the chase was in her, and with her father's spirit still warm inside her, still giving her fresh jabs of pain to remind her that she was alive, she had never looked forward so much to a consultation before.

_Bring it on, Erik. Let's see if you can get the better of me._


	8. He's Limed, I Warrant You!

"Good afternoon, Mr. Winters," she said, smiling sweetly as she pulled the door closed behind her, eyes on his blank of a face. He stood by the window, leaning against the sill, arms crossed.

"To you as well, Ms. Dale," he said, smiling slowly and pronouncing her name with emphasis on the second syllable, exactly the way she'd told him it was pronounced.

"I'm so glad you could make it for our session today," Christine really wanted to ham up the 'serious doctor' role, so she crossed the room and held out her hand for him to shake.

His smile widened as he met her hand with his own, larger than hers by a significant margin. His fingers were long and slim, and his hands were freezing cold, so much so that Christine had to suppress a shiver while she rolled her chair into the proper position.

"You seem to be much more…settled, this time around, Ms. Dale."

She smiled at his word choice. "I told you that I hadn't been ready last time, Mr. Winters," she said, not losing eye contact as she picked up her notepad, "I hope you don't think I'm a mess of nerves _every_ time I consult a patient."

"I should hope not." He took his own seat, directly across from her, and the room was so small that their knees almost touched. Christine remembered that his chair had been much further off, last time. Had he changed the position or had she forgotten to move it back?

In the middle of her musings, his voice continued. "These formalities will very quickly get in our way, won't they, Christine? You have my permission to call me by my given name, if you like."

There was no smile around his mouth. Christine made a mental note of how quickly his facial expression seemed to change. Her own rather plastic smile stretched a little bit wider.

"Very well, Erik, let's chuck the titles out the window. How was your weekend?"

"Tolerably dull. Yours?"

She laughed. "After repainting my bedroom, buying new furnishings while staggering tipsy around the mall, and music practice, I think my time was pretty lively."

_There. Take the bait._ _I'm opening up…will you?_

A momentary pause. "Music practice?"

"Yes," she broke eye contact to hide the quick twitch of her lips at her small victory, "I am resuming my study to be a singer."

"And when did you begin this study?"

"With my father," her voice was quiet and she could no longer keep the sadness out of her smile, "A long time ago."

If this didn't make him respond to her, then nothing would. After reading Rebecca's report of the time she had spent with him, she knew that Erik had a Hannibal Lecter-esque approach to those who tried to assist him.

As Rebecca wrote in her report, "Let him smell the scent of blood, or feel some sort of distress, and he'll respond. The response varies every time."

Christine felt a shudder of excitement and anxiety. How would he respond to this?

"I take it his death made it too distressing for you to continue? What instrument did you study?"

Distressing…the very word. Anxiety started to override excitement. Was she getting in too deep?

Too late to think about it now. She had to give as good as she got. "Yes. I could hardly bear to think about voice lessons, and I fear I'm terribly rusty. I'll have to find a tutor, I guess, or enroll in some classes."

He grunted softly, and for a moment the conversation dropped. The pause was welcome to Christine, for it gave her a moment to calm her racing heart and gather her thoughts. He was responding, well and good. Responding to music (another commonality among his reports was the general consensus that he was a music connoisseur of one type or another) would give her a good chance to get him to relate to her. The unfortunate aspect of this trade was that she was no longer in control. Music meant a lot to her too, and she carried much associated baggage. Any of which, once divulged (as it already was) could be used as a weapon against her.

Could she get close enough to him in time to _keep_ him from using it against her?

She quickly noted down his responses in a time-saving shorthand that she had studied. She'd first taken it up so that her anorexic patients would not be able to read her notes while she spoke with them, but now it served another purpose, and she was glad of it.

"Do you have any interest in music, Mr. Winters?" She disobeyed him by using his last name, baiting him to respond more emotionally.

"_Erik_, please, Doctor," he smiled again, a slight sneer in his eyes, "and yes, you could say that I have an extremely personal interest in music. It has been the one constant in my life."

"And how is that?"

_His mother was an opera singer, she must have taught him something or sung enough at home to get him interested. I know it, but I want _you_ to tell me, Erik. Come on, open up!_

"In much the same fashion it has been in yours, Christine." He focused with surprising intensity on her face, gauging her reactions, seeing if he had drawn blood in obliquely referencing her father.

She smiled. "You mean one of your parents taught you? Was it your father?"

"My mother."

_Short responses, he's getting defensive. I may have the upper hand, but I need to back off._

"Maybe I should ask _you_ to find me a tutor!" she joked, flipping over to a new page of notes, though the first one was nowhere near full. "You should hear me sing, I sound like a dying cat when I try to reach above two octaves!"

"If you have not sung since your father died, you should not be _trying_ to get above two octaves!" his voice was warmer, and Christine could immediately tell that he was passionately devoted to what he was saying. "You could strain your vocal chords or damage them irrevocably."

"I know," Christine said, sighing deeply. "I used to have the range of a light lyric soprano, but now I'm back down to your basic church-choir singer."

Erik regarded her closely. "How old were you when you really _stopped _training? If you stopped right when your father died, you could not have developed enough to achieve the true range of a lyric soprano."

Christine nodded, lips pursed ruefully. "I kept at it, on and off, until I was thirteen. My mother hated that…it always made me bad-tempered, especially after she married. When I stopped, my teacher didn't understand; he thought I had the potential to go all the way to the Met."

With no act at all, her eyes slid from his and she shook her head in sorry reflection. It had _killed_ her to stop…it was the last link to her father. Stopping had been a bitter admission that he was really, finally dead.

"You are still a soprano, clearly," Erik continued, after a short pause, more to himself than to her.

_I've got his attention. He's initiating the conversation now._

"And you say you have a range of only two octaves?"

"That's if I stretch. Which, you're absolutely correct, I should not be doing."

"Make sure that you only practice three times a week, one hour at a time, with a half-hour warm-up. You can do your own accompaniment?"

"I'm decent on a keyboard. If not, I use tapes."

Erik opened his mouth to continue the conversation, but Christine's timer beeped. Both of them jumped.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I think that's our time up," she said, hiding her smile once again as she switched off the desk clock's alarm. "Unfortunately, today I can't stay late…I have another appointment." _Liar, liar_, she laughed to herself at the stricken look in her patient's eyes.

_Right at the moment, he seems like a child deprived of his promised amusement._

He quickly covered it, though, rising himself and turning to gather his jacket. "I would not wish to keep you from the others who have the benefit of your council, Ms. Dale. Next week, yes?"

"I look forward to it. And don't forget to look out for a tutor for me," she teased, lightly, opening the door for him.

He looked at her for a long moment. "I will keep my eyes open."

"Thanks. Next week, then, at five o'clock."

And he was out the door and down the hall.

Christine closed the door, leaned against it, and laughed.

_Got him!_


	9. The Wisdom of the Tuscan Sun

Christine was washing the dinner dishes that same when it struck her that the rest of her apartment really didn't agree with her. She wiped her plate, fork, and frying pan dry and replaced them in the closet, then turned around and slowly surveyed her kitchen.

The table and chairs were plain pine, serviceable and solid. She liked them. They reminded her of a country cottage somewhere. But the rest of the décor, including the bookcase, dishes, and appliances just bored her. They were all serviceable, of course, but they were very plain. Especially in this age of color and life, her kitchen was just so…very…dull!

She walked into her bedroom. Now, that was more like it! Ever since she'd painted it, changed the bedding and hung up the canopy, not to mention dragging out her keyboard and setting it up with an end table of sheet music, this room had begun to feel more like a home.

Standing in the doorframe, Christine looked from one room to the other. Where was the difference? What did she want?

It struck her suddenly that she was thinking of the book Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayers. The first time that she had read that book, she had loved the idea of taking an old house, learning its secrets and ways, and then coaxing one's own personality into reshaping the space.

Of course, this cookie-cutter apartment was nowhere near as charismatic as that Tuscan estate, Bramasole. But that didn't mean that Christine couldn't infuse some life into it!

For so long she'd been bullied along by circumstances, simply unable to stand and fight. As she was getting her music back (and she thought with a thrill of the practice that awaited her) why should she not remake this blank canvas into a place that actually felt like home?

It would be a big job. Especially that bathroom. She'd have to get the landlord's permission to either repaint or replace those vile tiles. But though music was the lynchpin on which the whole of her life turned, so it brought, with its resurgence, the desire to take on a challenge, and, corny as it sounded, rediscover herself.

What did the perfect kitchen look like?

She closed her eyes and thought.

The table and chairs would remain, though she would paint the bottoms white and varnish the top with two or three light coats. The bookshelf would match, and she'd change out some of the books…surely she didn't need _that_ many of Dr. Phil's. Dishes…something floral, but not overwhelming…perhaps in pale yellow and blue. She'd get rid of the food processor. She'd never used it, and it just kept blocking up her damned surface area. Replace the cutting board (the old plastic one was so slashed up that cutting anything on it made mincemeat). A vase of fresh flowers…

Her vision was so lovely and clear that when she opened her eyes it was almost incomprehensible that it should not already look that way.

_Well,_ she thought, shakily. _That settles that_.

She crossed directly to her bookcase and started culling whatever she didn't want. It turned out that she liked surprisingly little of what she read. The medical journals were relegated to the bookshelf over her computer, in the little guest bedroom, save for the ones that she _really_ didn't need anymore. All except two of the self-help books were either unhelpful or unwanted. As for the bestsellers, she kept some of them, but again, the majority went to the garbage bag.

Huffing and puffing, Christine dragged the bag down the stairs and dumped it in the trunk of her car. She'd bring them to the Goodwill or Salvation Army tomorrow. Someone else could reap the benefits of Dr. Phil's threadbare wisdom. She was finished with it.

The old metal bookcase, stuck in the tall, narrow alcove because she'd had nowhere else to put it when she moved in, looked sad and forlorn. Taking the books that she wanted off the shelves, she stacked them in her bedroom and took the bookcase down the stairs as well. That she simply marked with a 'free' sign and left at the end of her driveway.

It was nearly 8 pm by the time she'd finished writing out her general kitchen makeover plan, and she sat herself down to the keyboard to practice. Being as orderly as she was, Christine made the point to set aside 2 hours for practicing every night, from 8 to 10. Half-hour warm-up, one-hour practice, and another half-hour cool down, after which she'd go for a jog (to strengthen her endurance and breath control), shower, and go to sleep.

She found it did wonders for her sleeping habits. Though she'd only adopted the routine for three days, for those three days she'd gone to sleep promptly and stayed asleep until the alarm woke her at 7.

Sitting down at the keyboard, Christine started her scales, playing up and down the octaves, in thirds and fifths, to get her lungs working and her diaphragm accustomed to the exercise. As she did, she found herself thinking about Erik. He was clearly an aficionado in the realm of music. What was his specialty?

She switched into a minor key and started up again, listening to her voice and its tone as she did so.

He'd been so interested when she'd said she was studying singing. He'd known about how long she'd have to train…and given her suggestions as to how she could go about strengthening her voice.

Yet another key. His voice was so elegant, each word carefully shaped and pronounced, that it was entirely possible that he was a singer himself. Then there were his hands with the long, strong fingers. Perfect for a pianist. Maybe he was both? Perhaps he'd been a teacher?

Christine broke off to flex her fingers (another thing not used to such a workout) and laughed. Maybe she'd ask him to teach her. Oh, boy, the shit would hit the fan then! Rebecca would certainly pull her…of all things to do, that could never be. It would be a conflict of interest to interact so closely with a patient under one's own care. If discovered, she'd lose her bloody license.

Starting again on her exercises, Christine could not help the feeling of disappointment that lanced through her, so sharply for a moment that it made her gasp. Honestly! She'd known the man for two weeks, two sessions…really, just one hour of time.

Of course, that wasn't strictly true. She'd read his whole file, hadn't she? If she hadn't, she'd never have been able to catch him in such a snare as the attraction of her music.

Enough was enough. She was warmed up now…she could feel her warm blood moving around her lungs and the strength in her throat and vocal chords. Pulling out the song that she'd determined to review until she mastered it, she tackled the accompaniment for a few minutes before launching herself into the song.

(Hospital)

The next day, Christine's throat was sore. It was enough to convince her that Erik's advice had been right…three days of practice in a row after years of inactivity was too much for her. Tonight, all she'd do is review the accompaniment and work on her fingering. She'd had to stop in too many places the night before to figure out how to play the music.

Ordering a cup of coffee from the machine in the hall, Christine couldn't stop herself from jumping when a voice behind her said, "Tuesday morning hangover, Christine? I'd never have believed it of you."

She turned and smiled, eyes cold. "Well, you won't have to, Carly. Just a dry throat, that's all."

Carlotta's hazel eyes sparkled with not-altogether kindly amusement. Christine felt the same old stab of jealously when she looked at the older woman's features. They were worlds apart in looks. Carlotta had that classic, voluptuous beauty that seemed to glow out from her whenever she moved. Her face was fine-boned and always accentuated perfectly with the exact right amount of make-up. Next to her, Christine could not hold a candle, really.

"Hmm," Carly stepped forward to order her own cup, her proximity forcing Christine awkwardly out of the way. She seemed to do that a lot. "How are you and Erik…getting along?"

Christine was hard-pressed to distinguish whether the man's name had been pronounced with contempt, frustration, or fury. She decided it was a mixture of all three, and was absurdly happy that she seemed to have a better rapport with the man than her professional rival.

Ooh, how good this was going to be!

"We are still learning about each other, and becoming friends. But I feel that we will work quite well together in the future." This in a nonchalant tone of voice; it didn't do to _sound_ as though you were gloating.

"Ah. No doubt Becky," Carlotta jerked her head towards their supervisor's office, "warned you that he's a complete schizo. I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole, now. At first, I thought we were doing well together…likely the same way you feel now. But soon after, he became too difficult to deal with."

_Too difficult for _you_ to deal with. I'm made of tougher stuff._

"Well, we'll see how it goes."

"Right."

Carlotta took her cup and started off down the hall. "Oh, by the way," she said, over her shoulder, "I'm giving a performance at the Black Cat this Saturday, at 9. Love it if you could make it."

Christine made no response, but neither was Carly looking for one.

Carlotta, thank God, was just showing off about her part-time jazz singer's career. Thankfully, she didn't know that Christine was a frustrated performer, otherwise her invitations and condescending manner would make life at the hospital absolutely unbearable.

Unfortunately, Christine had been dragged in the name of team spirit to several of her engagements at the local clubs. This was unfortunate because far from spending the evening suffering under the pain of an agonizing performance, Christine had instead been forced to admit that Carlotta was a very good singer.

Her performances and looks were classic, sultry jazz style, but Carlotta had stamina and enthusiasm, as well as a very good range. She favored mezzo more than pure soprano, but that just assisted her in the bass-line of most jazz songs. Sitting through one of her concerts was an agony of jealousy for Christine, and she made the mental note to have extremely pressing personal business on Saturday. All day long.

Walking down the hall towards her first appointment, she ran into Meg.

"Did you get the invite?"

"To what?"

"Carlotta's Black Cat performance."

"Oh," Christine sighed, "yeah. I don't think I'm going."

"Oh, I gotcha." Meg nodded wisely. "The problem is, that for all she's an arrogant peacock, she really can sing."

_Thanks, Meg._

"I've actually got plans to make major kitchen renovations, this weekend."

"No way! First the bedroom, now the kitchen?"

"Yeah! I've already got started, too. This afternoon I'm going to shop around for a new bookcase and some dishes."

"Christine," Meg gave her the patented 'hard stare', "are you okay? I hate to bring up an example from when you were really down and out, but this past weekend you were…"

"I know. But," Christine lowered her voice, blushing slightly, "You remember that whole 'I want to get my life back' sob speech I gave you?"

Meg nodded. She didn't think she'd ever forget.

"Well, I really meant it. Not just the music, but everything. I want to change, I want to…I want to wake up! I've put so much of my life aside that I just can't stand to see this go on any longer."

Meg nodded, and her pager went off. "Perfect timing," she sighed, hurrying off towards ICU, "If you need help this weekend, gimme a call, okay?"

"You got it."

Tucking her clipboard under her arm, Christine started about the work of her day.


	10. A Performance and an Encounter

Christine wiped the sweat off her forehead with a dirty cloth and then clapped her hands vigorously together to cleanse them from the dust. Since her hands stung viciously, she winced and simply leaned back against the sink, shrugging her shoulders to get rid of the ache.

Her kitchen table was newly sanded, and ready for the coats of primer on the bottom (in preparation for their coat of white), and the light stain for the top. It had taken her three hours of sanding to get the table to this point, and her fingers, arms, palms, knees…hell, everything hurt!

Despite all that, despite even the mess that completely coated the floor of her kitchen (sawdust was all-pervasive even given her thorough covering of newspapers), she chuckled and felt great. Cheesy eighties rock had gotten her through the project, and now she figured she had just enough time to sweep the floor before Meg showed up to help her varnish and paint.

She stood up straight and arched backwards, trying futilely to get the last kinks out of her back. Then she snatched the broom and dustpan and set about with vigor, even stirring up more dust than she put to rest. She sang loudly to _Take On Me_, hitting the high note with perfection and smirking as she heard her own steady voice nailing the difficult tone. Even after little more than a week of practicing, her previous training was reinforcing itself, and her diaphragm and vocal chords felt strong and sure.

Of course, she still had an awful long way to go. She had been far from perfection when she left off, after all, and if she wanted to be any sort of classical singer at all, she needed to get her range at least an octave about what it had been. What had scared her before (the hours of practice, the all-too-real possibility of failure) was now nothing more than an invigorating challenge.

She could do exactly what she wanted. And she would.

Christine laughed as she banged the dustpan against the interior of the garbage can to get rid of the last bit of dust, and as she did, she heard the telltale sounds of high heels clicking up the stairs of her building. Moments later, Meg's smiling face peeked around the corner of her door.

"Wow! You've got it all ready and everything? Christine, you've got to learn to sleep in on Saturdays…it's only noon!"

"Who could sleep on a day like this?" Christine motioned towards the window, where the sun poured down on the early spring flowers. Then, she admitted with a giggle, "I also forgot to close the blinds last night…I sort of woke up with the dawn. You know I can't sleep with any sort of light in the room."

"And again, you are so lucky you don't have my roommate. Actually, it's sad you finished the sanding already…I could have imagined I was sanding off her face."

"Ouch, Meg!" Christine laughed. "But sorry, you'll have to work off your frustrations with a paintbrush. Here, grab one."

Meg slipped off her shoes and tossed aside her bag. "Tell me how this whole DIY thing goes again…"

Christine sighed. "Okay, so you paint on the varnish and then wipe it away with a rag…"

"Isn't that counterintuitive? I mean, isn't it supposed to stay there?"

"Yes, but you make it lighter and more durable by having several light coats instead of one really thick coat. Between the two of us we should be able to get this done in an hour or so, let it dry, and then go on to the table legs."

Meg took up her paintbrush and started smearing the varnish on the table, a highly dubious expression on her face.

"You know, for being such a graceful surgeon, you're handling that brush like it's a dead rat."

She laughed. "There's a hell of a lot of difference between a scalpel and a paintbrush." Observing Christine's more professional manner, she asked, "When did you get to be so handy, anyway?"

"You'll laugh."

"Maybe. I'll try not to."

Christine puffed her cheeks out and sighed. "Okay."

"Well?"

"I did a little research."

Meg admirably swallowed her laugh, almost choking as she forced it back into her belly. "What did you use? _The Better Homes and Gardens Bible_?"

"_DIY for Dummies_."

This time the laugh exploded, and Meg got a smear of varnish on her arm for her pains.

(Later)

"You are so lucky I was able to wash that off."

"You said you wouldn't laugh. I'm totally justified."

"I said that maybe I would. And therefore I was completely within the limits of my verbal contract. If I wanted, I could take you to court for pain and suffering charges."

Christine swallowed her bite of sandwich and stuck out her tongue. The two girls, after varnishing the tabletop, had retreated into the bedroom with their lunches, all the windows open to let the smell of varnish dissipate.

For a few moments, they sat in silence, just basking in the birdsong coming from outside and letting their tired arms relax. Then, Meg (who never could learn to leave well enough alone), cleared her throat and tentatively began,

"Hey, Christine?"

"Mmm?" the other girl had her eyes closed as she leaned against the bedside.

"You remember that Carlotta's got her show at the Black Cat tonight, right?"

Silence.

Meg bit her tongue and then blurted, "You gonna come? It'll probably be good."

"Yeah, I'm coming."

Meg coughed. Christine smiled and opened her eyes, turning to look at her friend's dumbfounded expression.

"You are?"

"Yeah."

That took a moment to process. "Um, I thought there was insurmountable antipathy there."

"Oh, don't get me wrong. There is. I really do hate Carly's guts. But hey, she is a good singer, and I can afford to learn a few things from her." Christine's gaze turned steely. "Of course, if she suspects that for a moment, I will be forced to kill whichever nosy friend of mine gave her that idea."

When Christine looked like that, it was always hard to tell if she was joking. Most often, she wasn't. Meg held up her sandwich and waved it like a white flag. "She won't hear a thing from me…I guarantee it! It's not like I'm buddy-buddy with her either. When would I get the chance to tell her, anyway?"

"Oh, relax! Am I really that scary?"

"Have you ever looked in a mirror when you make that face?"

"…Point taken. On another note, if you thought I'd say no, why did you bother to ask?"

It was a sign of how far Christine had come that Meg was able to say it. "I think you need to get out more. And even though you'll only be socializing with people you see everyday anyway, I think it'll be good for you."

"That your professional opinion, Doctor?" Christine sighed. "You're right."

"Well, it had to happen someday. Hallelujah and Praise the Lord!"

"Come on you. Finish your chicken salad and let's start painting."

"Oh, can't we rest a while? My arms hurt."

"You call yourself a surgeon? Build up that stamina!"

"Don't want to. It's my day off."

"Just picture the table legs as your roommate and your paintbrush as a sword."

"…Let's go."

(Later)

Christine turned once more and examined herself from every possible angle in her mirror. The dress had been one she'd bought on a whim a few weeks ago, when spring was in the air and all the summer dresses made their ways out of hiding. It was white with a pattern of climbing vines in a simple v-neck style. With a little crocheted shrug in matching green and a pair of white flats, she thought she looked quite nice.

It had been a little while, however, since she'd gone out to a place that wasn't a bar to have fun. Well, technically the Black Cat was a bar, but everyone knew you went there for the music.

The club's owners were a kooky couple who catered to the indie music scene around town. Basically, if you were decent, you could perform. The club opened at 8 and stayed open until 4. Sometimes, groups of musicians who specialized in a certain genre teamed up and put together a night devoted to jazz, or metal, or techno, or whatever.

Carlotta was one of the ringleaders of the local jazz club, and she was often the brains behind the programs. From the few times Christine had gone to her performances, she had to admit that Carlotta had good taste when it came to the arrangement of pieces. Far from letting her ego get in the way of the other performers, the evening was usually nicely interspersed with improv, instrumental, and vocal pieces.

Though it killed Christine a little to admit it, she really could stand to learn from Carlotta's experience. So, she drew back her shoulders, took one last appraising glance at herself, and turned, grabbing her purse and heading out the door.

It was a quick fifteen minute drive to the club, but it took Christine another fifteen minutes to find parking (apparently jazz nights were pretty popular), and she arrived just before the curtain went up on the first act at 8:30. Meg waved her over to the table where many of the hospital staff sat, nursing their drinks, and pushed over Christine's favorite black Russian.

She barely had time to hear Meg's approving comments on her clothes (she'd barely been able to keep Meg from dressing her up), before the first act launched into _A Night in Tunisia_.

When 9 o'clock rolled around, Christine had just started to relax, mostly because of the influence of her two drinks. It was strange, being surrounded by so many people, and apparently so welcomed by them all. She was not on close terms with many of the staff, despite working with them every day, so the goodwill she felt and the smiles she received were humbling and touching. During the song breaks, she chatted shyly with Rebecca and a cute orderly, Jonathan, while trying to avoid Meg's raised eyebrows and winks.

The house lights dimmed again, and a warm red glow enveloped the stage. The curtain slowly rose, and there stood Carlotta, dressed in a burgundy dress that set off her color beautifully. She lifted her head, smiled at the audience, and began _Sway_.

Christine loved that song, and she mouthed the lyrics, bobbing her head as she listened. She always wanted to dance when she heard the lyrics. It was perfect.

As if Carlotta was reading her mind, she motioned to the dance floor and several couples strayed there, swaying lazily to her rhythm.

Jonathan turned to Christine and offered his hand, and without a thought, she put hers into it and let him lead her out onto the floor. Together they moved, sometimes getting the steps wrong (neither of them really knew how to dance), but it was still nice to be held and moved by a cute guy, with her brain a little fuzzy and her body warm, and all the time hearing the lyrics that made her want to move.

The song felt like it ended too soon, and a beat after the music stopped, Christine held onto Jonathan, wanting to keep the moment going. But the crowd was applauding and she joined them, smiling up at Carlotta, who for a moment caught her eye with a smile instead of that glint of arrogance that always sparkled when they spoke.

In that moment, Christine even wanted to be friends with her.

After all, she thought, you really had to understand music and its purpose if you could make people feel so good.

When the jazz evening ended at midnight and a string quartet took over, Carlotta joined them at their table, flushed from performing and radiant with success.

"Thank you all for coming!" she gushed, sounding truly pleased. "Did you like it?"

Meg said, "It was really good. As always."

Christine smiled and added, "You put together a good event."

Carlotta's goodwill seemed to expand, because she forewent a niggling comment to say, "I do my best. Sometimes it comes out well." Then she smiled and tugged at Jonathan's arm. "Are you gonna buy me a drink? I'm a thirsty woman, after all?"

He chuckled. "Sure. What can I get you?"

"Screwdriver. Keep it simple."

"You got it."

They kept chatting together until past one. Unfortunately, Christine was the one who started the party breaking up. Glancing at her watch, she remembered all of a sudden that she'd promised to be at family lunch the next day, and if she wanted to look fresh-faced, she needed to get her sleep.

"I'll see you all on Monday," she said, "I have to get to sleep or my mom's gonna wonder how I've been spending my nights."

"Oh, crap! Is that the time?" Meg said, standing up so quick she nearly knocked over her glass of water. "I promised I'd spend time with Mark tomorrow!" Mark was her boyfriend of a year and a half, but he never came to Carlotta's performances because his tastes in music ran towards the goth/metal mix. Christine always wondered how they could get along, but Meg always smiled and said, "opposites attract, darling" before dodging any more questions.

"Is anyone going to be brave and stay on with me?" Carlotta said, as Rebecca and Jonathan also realized they had to go.

"Sorry!" was the universal reply, and Christine was out the door, down the street, and in front of her car before she realized she'd forgotten to grab her purse, hanging off the back of her chair.

"Crap," she grumbled, starting to jog back towards the club. There was no danger of it being closed already, but if someone had stolen it, she was a little way from home. She got into the club just as a new act was starting. Carlotta was nowhere in sight, but thankfully her bag was still hanging over the chair. She crossed the room to grab it just as the lone player at the piano started a delicate piece by Debussy.

The lovely strains of the song stopped her in her tracks, and she was sitting again before she knew what she was doing. Resting her head on her hands, she glanced dreamily in the direction of the piano and let the music drift her off into a realm of beauty and sound, before her eyes glanced briefly across the face of the performer.

Her whole body jerked as though shocked with a current of electricity.

Erik!


	11. Minor Setbacks

Christine stood and retreated so that she stood behind a pillar of the club, grateful that she hadn't been seen. Glancing quickly around to see if her sudden movement had attracted his attention, she was relieved to see that his face was still earnestly bent towards the keys, the house lights glinting dully off his dark mask.

Well, at least now she knew what all that exposure to classical music as a kid had given him in the way of musical talent! He was clearly a virtuoso on the piano, and who knew what else he could play?

But this was a bad place for her. After all, how would it look? She'd been standing all fuzzy-eyed, staring at the stage like a lovesick puppy. The two of them were still in a very fragile stage of their relationship, and Rebecca had warned Christine more than once not to break the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship.

She hesitated, stealing another glance at Erik as she stood concealed behind the cold metal pillar. Her gaze encompassed more than the masked performer, however, and she noticed with a slightly eerie shiver that every face in the room was upturned to the piano, people resting their heads on their hands or on each other's shoulders…as though the whole room were being lulled to sleep by a sorcerer's spell.

Christine couldn't help but shudder just a bit. How strange…a few moments ago she must have looked exactly like them.

Even one of the owners, Helen Buckner, drifted out from behind the bar and stood with her drink in hand to listen to the piano. Hugging the cold glass to herself, she swayed, setting her dull orange broomstick skirt swaying to the rhythm. Christine took another look and felt herself wound up in that gossamer web of notes, floating around the room, ensnaring everybody's gaze and drawing it inexorably towards the long-fingered hands that plied the keys.

The song ended with three soft chords, and Erik's head lifted as though he were drifting to the surface after a long deep-sea dive.

"He's just wonderful, isn't he?"

Christine jumped at the sudden voice near her ear. Helen stood watching her, smiling faintly, and Christine realized that she must look like a shy groupie, hiding behind the pillar because she was too afraid to show herself to her idol.

She took a deep breath and said, "Yes, he certainly is. Does he play often?"

Helen shrugged. "Whenever there's a classical music night. And a few odd times in between. He really organizes the whole classical scene around here. I think he likes jazz, too, which was why he was around tonight. Did you enjoy the performance earlier? I thought I saw you here, sitting with the medical crowd."

"Yes, you did. I came to see a coworker." Christine was just about to glance back in the direction of the stage to see if Erik had gone backstage after his performance when Helen spoke above her head.

"How much would I have to pay to make you a permanent feature here, Erik?"

Christine's heart leaped in her throat, but she clenched her hand around the handle of her purse and turned in time to see Helen's hands meet Erik's in a hearty shake.

Erik seemed to consider her question for a moment, eyes lingering over Christine's shadowed form as his mouth twisted. "Too much of a good thing is still too much, Helen."

"So self-effacing," Helen chuckled. "What can I get you, then?"

"A black Russian, if you would."

Christine stopped herself just in time from starting at that comment.

"Okay. Anything for you, honey?" Thank God, Helen didn't seem to notice that Christine was in any sort of discomfort.

"Oh, oh no. I'm just about to go, anyway."

"All right. Be back with that in just a sec, Erik."

When she left, there was momentary silence between the two of them. Christine mustered her courage to calmly survey his face, but the expression of his eyes and mouth were flat, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"You play wonderfully, Erik." At the very last moment she stopped herself from saying 'Mr. Winters'. Unable to stop herself, she went on, "Debussy is one of my favorites."

He smiled. "Thank you, Christine. I saw you earlier, but I had no idea that you would stay around to listen to me."

"Well, I didn't even know that you were playing…I didn't even know you _played_," Christine said, laughing nervously and too loud.

"I only do so rarely in public. Music is extremely personal for me, and I don't like to share."

_Interesting_, Christine's diagnostic brain noted. Now that she had broken into the conversation, she felt firmer in her footing as a professional, and her nerves subsided. Helen returned with Erik's drink, but the sudden rush of patrons to the bar drew her attention, and she didn't stay to make conversation.

"Helen," Christine began, suppressing another juvenile urge to call the woman 'Mrs. Buckner', "told me that you were one of the ringleaders of the classical music scene in town. I've been to a few of those events, but I've never seen you."

Erik cleared his throat. "I may be involved in the performances, but Helen overestimates how often I personally play. Tonight was only as a favor to her…she had an empty spot between bands, and asked that I step in. Since I was already here watching the jazz performance, I could hardly refuse."

"And what did you think of Dr. Guidicelli's performance?" Christine felt a strange little smile creeping around her mouth as she referred to Erik's previous doctor. She was also curious to see whether Erik would admit to seeing her in the club.

"She has a voice well-suited to jazz. I am afraid, though, if she continues to perform without warming up, which she does to play up the husky quality of her voice, she will rather severely strain her vocal chords. I would not be surprised if she were not able to speak at all, the days after she performs. That will only get worse as she goes on."

"You can tell that from just listening to her?" Christine was astounded.

"Naturally. I grew up around the opera, Christine. I am accustomed to every ploy a woman can try to manipulate her voice to suit a certain role."

Somehow, hearing her name come from his lips so easily only added to the weird feeling that had been building in her stomach since hearing him play. After a moment of silence, during which she struggled to maintain a cool gaze, she decided that she needed to get out of this situation.

"Is our appointment still on for this week?" she said, trying to edge discreetly towards the door. Before she could say, 'I'll see you then', the group on stage struck up one of Chopin's waltzes.

"Of course," somehow, Erik's voice managed to carry over the music and the rush of dancers towards the floor. "Might I ask for a dance, though, before you run away?" Though his tone was perfectly polite, there was a strange and chilling edge to his eyes as he took in her darting eyes and nervous feet. "I noticed you earlier, dancing with a young man. You do it well, for someone obviously untrained."

Christine braved his stern glance for one moment before turning away. "I can't. I need to be up early tomorrow to visit my family. Besides, that would hardly be professional, I think."

Now his mouth tightened and his smirk was downright cold. "Of course. I apologize for delaying you."

Without another word, he swept by her and through one of the doors that led to the backstage area. Left alone in the swirl of music and dancing people, she felt a lump build in her throat and the strange sting of tears in her eyes.

Somehow, she'd offended him. For some reason, he'd really wanted her to accept. Why?

She took a tighter grip on her purse and marched out the club's door, wanting to grind her fists in her ears to shut out the cheery waltz. The moment the answer to her question came to her mind, she wanted to bite off her tongue with frustration.

_Of course, Christine,_ she berated herself, _he's clearly suffering from severe body dismorphia, which makes him feel physically repulsive. And then you just had to go and reinforce his psychosis!_

However, if sleeping with the guy would cure him, she reasoned immediately thereafter, she sure as hell wasn't going to leap into his bed. Ah well. She'd just have to spend most of their next session doing damage control. At least now she knew what sort of place music held in his life.

Despite her logical line of thinking, Christine was berating herself with some very colorful terms by the time she reached her car and got in to drive home.


	12. Discoveries and Adaptations

What was it with her and Mondays recently? They always seemed to tie her stomach in knots. Only last week, she'd been dancing through the hallways, buoyed by her music and her secrets and her self-realization, and now she tiptoed through the halls with dread, hearing each tick of the clock as another notch in her impending doom.

The ironic thing was that this wasn't the first, or most spectacular time that she'd messed up with a client.

One year into her residency (when she really was supposed to know better), she had met and started counseling a man, Derek Younge. He was a middle aged gay man, going through severe midlife crisis after his partner of 6 years had left him for a woman. It was all Christine could do to keep ahead of his rampant bulimia; he thought, like most spurned lovers, that if he could only reach the ideal figure, he could regain his lost love.

It never worked out that way, as she had discovered long before. Not for the first time, she'd wished to reveal patient secrets if only to dull the ache of what her client was feeling.

She avoided that pitfall, but fell right into another. Positing that the real cause of his bulimia was depression, she'd given him some heavy anti-depressants and other mood-modifying medications.

Thank God he'd tried to overdose in the hospital, when she left the room to file his paperwork.

But it was a few minutes of heart-stopping horror when she came into the room, finding him reeling on his feet. She'd shoved him into the chair, wheeled him into the bathroom, and then shoved two fingers as far down his soft palate as she could.

At least bulimia had tempered his gag reflex to a hair trigger.

When his stomach was clear, she called an orderly to call an ambulance (leaving smears of basil-scented vomit on her pager) and leaned against the sink, shaking with adrenaline and rage. It was the first time a patient had taken advantage of her best plans and wishes for them, her desire to help, and she was livid. They had become good friends; what the hell had he been thinking, committing suicide in her own office and making her his enabler?

She had seen him onto the ambulance, and then marched straight over to Rebecca to request a patient transfer. It wasn't enough to spare her a malpractice inquiry, but Derek did not bring the matter forward, and indeed, changed not only doctors but hospitals. Christine did not speak to or see him from the minute he left her hospital strapped to a gurney.

Recalling the incident was enough to settle Christine's mouth and brow into deep furrows, but at least it put her current situation in perspective; if she could survive that, then (justly) spurning the advances of one of her patients was a speck in comparison.

Though she wanted to preserve the illusion of friendship between them, she and Erik were not friends. She was his doctor, deserving of his respect and obedience…deserving, that is, if she could earn it. And she was not likely to do that by greeting him this afternoon, hat in hand, all apologies for having doing exactly as she ought to have done.

The biggest challenge she had to get through today didn't even have to do with Erik. She had to consult with Diana Knorr's parents as to the exact visitation and residency procedures for her new home. At least the girl was excited about going (as excited as anyone in her position could be about anything, that is) but her parents were having severe difficulties coping with the knowledge that either they or the best of their town's medical minds were unable to deal with their daughter's problems.

Taking a deep breath to clear her mind of distractions (of Debussy and masked men, for starters…and how could her mind twist that into a plot for a historical romance?) she prepared her office to receive the parents and brought out her brochures for the beautiful health retreat upstate.

(Cafeteria)

Christine's head drooped low, curls almost hanging in her coffee. Ripping off a bandage didn't even come close to describing how painful that conference had been. After an hour, she had to leave the room to discretely page for Carlotta to handle her midmorning consult. And still, the meeting had dragged on. Guilt was the hardest human emotion to shake; it was a slow burn feeling that roiled in the gut and refused to lie still, only burn low and consume from the inside.

Linda and Russell Knorr were suffering from it in spades. Here was their child, whom they had loved and guided and cared for from her very first moments, placed so far beyond their help that they would have to absent themselves from her lives for months to let her get over whatever had caused the situation.

And what could she say? The causes of anorexia were neither psychological or chemical, but that tricky mixture of both, dancing in the gray matter of the brain. Diana certainly wasn't aware of why she was compelled to limit her intake; at first, she had given the line that it was society, but it wasn't true. It was a few months into their sessions that she admitted that she didn't know what was causing it. In one despairing joke, she said that maybe she needed an exorcism (she'd just read _The Crucible_) because she might be possessed of a demon.

Medically, Christine almost agreed with her.

Try explaining any of that to the parents. Diana writhed with guilt whenever she knew she'd fallen behind her weight chart; she knew how it was hurting them, which only consolidated her depression that circumstances would never change. She needed to be away from the cycle of guilt and delve into her mental state, reaching for health on her own, for herself.

Christine sighed deeply and sipped her mocha. Her limbs felt drained and heavy, and even though her head spun and her hands trembled from a caffeine overdose, she couldn't summon the energy to get a bottle of water or take in any food. All she had to do was hang on until the evening, and then she'd sleep till next shift.

"You look awful."

Carly had thrown her coat open for lunch, and her wine-red, high-necked sweater looked devastating against her clear, pale skin. How on earth did she pull off wearing red with red hair? Just one more point on her chart, Christine reflected sourly.

"Thanks. You don't sound too hot yourself," she said, lips twitching as she realized she wouldn't have caught the roughness around the edges of Carlotta's usually manicured tones were it not for Erik's remarks on Saturday evening. But she did sound hoarse, and no amount of medicinal lozenges could disguise it.

"Just tired after the show, I guess." One shoulder shrugged elegantly. "Did you enjoy it?"

"I did. You sing very well, and you work well together as an ensemble."

Carly smiled, dipping her head in the first sign of bashfulness Christine had ever detected. "We're actually working on recording an album. The drummer, Mike, has an amateur studio in his basement. The acoustics are decent, so we're going to try to produce a set to sell after our performances."

What normally would have set off a bellyache of vicious jealously within her now suddenly passed with only a mental sigh of regret. "When it comes out, sign me up for a copy. I'd love to hear it."

"Thank you." Carlotta picked at her salad. "Aren't you eating?"

"Rough morning. I feel too sick to keep much down."

"And you've still got the toughest part of your day ahead of you, don't you?"

Christine looked up. "You watching my schedule?"

She laughed. "No, it's just that Monday was always his day. I swear he uses the fun he gets out of it to carry him through the rest of the week. Hang on."

Carlotta stood and went back to the concession. She returned with a banana.

"Healthy sugar, and everyone could use more potassium. Should be gentle enough to stay down, even with a caffeine headache. Speaking of which," she slid over a cup of water, "you should stay hydrated."

Not knowing what to think, Christine picked up the banana and started peeling. "To what do I owe this…well, I'm gonna go for it…startling consideration?"

Her lips arched up in a saucy smile. "You're my first customer. I think I can spare the seventy cents to keep you healthy until you blow $19.99 on my album."

The laugh was refreshing in its intensity, clearing the gray cobwebs from her mind.

"I knew it had to be something like that. I knew it."

(Office)

It was astounding how little she knew about the people around her. Once one step was taken along a certain road, options opened up that she had no idea even existed. Till now, she had skirted the edge of the hospital's tight knit community, preferring to do her job and go home, disconnecting from her work life as neatly as pulling a plug.

But now…she'd run into Jonathan on the way out of the cafeteria, and he'd seemed disappointed to have missed her, inviting her to sit with him and his friends tomorrow. And Carly…all she'd wanted was some concession as to her talents, and she was gracious in her superiority. Christine didn't want to tell her what her ambitions were musically just yet, but could it even be possible that she could consider the other woman a friend, even if a bit of a shark-toothed one?

Even Rebecca seemed a little more at ease around her, a little more friendly, when all they'd done was share a show and a drink together.

Somehow, no one had trusted…or even known her before.

Christine reviewed her interactions with the staff up until now. Certainly, she had been polite and dedicated, willing to cover shifts or take on difficult tasks, but she must have seemed a little like an Ice Queen to them. Unapproachable and cold.

It was an unwelcome discovery, but at least she was glad to have discovered it only when she was emerging from it. She annotated her goals for her future to include: making more friends, and seeing what was there to be had. She felt regret already for going through the last two years isolated and fitfully lonely, when she might have had friends waiting all around her, looking for her to reach out first.

All her musings distracted her to the point that she didn't realize what time it was until her pager beeped.

_What?_

It just marked the _end_ of her session with Erik!

What on earth…?

Realization hit her, and she grimaced. How small and petty this was! Dodging an appointment with nary a by-your-leave just because she'd stood him up! Something she'd been completely justified to do, by the way, and how dare he!

She lunged for the phone, dialed his number sharply, and breathed sharply into the receiver to compose herself before delivering the perfectly passive-aggressive memo that she'd had to do to countless other blithely oblivious clients.

"Hello, Mr. Winters, it's Christine Dale calling. I hope nothing serious kept you from our meeting this afternoon; please contact me before the end of the day tomorrow to reschedule your session. Or, if another day would work better for you, please let me know so that we can avoid this waste of time."

She paused, and smiled, voice scaling slightly higher.

"Anyway, please contact me as soon as you can at 518-555-6782, my direct line. Thank you."

The phone clicked firmly back in the cradle, and Christine packed up her papers, heading out a half-hour early. Between Carly, her new food for thought, and the invigorating phone jab, she was ready to finish painting her kitchen before practicing tonight.

_Thanks, Erik. You may not have wanted me to feel better, but you are far from being able to read _my_ mind!_


	13. Couples' Therapy

She clicked on her electric keyboard and thumbed through the stack of sheet music on her stand. What would it be this evening? Something a little light and contemporary? A classic bel canto aria? Or should she stretch this evening?

Glancing over another set of music, Christine smiled. That would be perfect. No way in hell could she play the accompaniment, but still…she had a tape in here somewhere…

If there was such a thing as being in love with a soundtrack, Christine had always had a passionate affair with the music from the movie _A Room With a View_. The carefully chosen arias from slightly lesser known works (although, _O Mio Babbino Caro_, in the opening credits, was familiar even to metalheads) the smooth orchestral tracks…she loved the whole thing. Her favorite track was something she had always wanted to sing professionally, an aria from a Puccini operetta, La Rondine.

It was a hard song to sing without sounding like a siren; it required delicacy and an unerring ear for pitch. Even the recording she had of it was not sung very well.

Christine took a long time to warm up, making sure her voice was strong and sure before tackling the aria. For one thing, even when she'd been in top form, she had not been able to sing the thing well. The notes were above her capability at that point; the human voice doesn't reach its full maturity until later in life, but now she thought that she might be able to hold the difficult tones.

"_Chi il bel sogno di doretta_," she sang, feeling her vocal chords stretch with the unaccustomed workout, and as her voice rose and fell with the song, she felt her stomach muscles tighten and her diaphragm tense, and, wonder of wonders, she nailed the notes!

Two minutes, and they felt like ages, isolated in time with crystalline perfection, framed by the chords of the melody, and she rose from under the music like a scuba diver coming up from one hundred feet of ocean.

She sighed. God! She needed to start recording her practice sessions. She could have had that on tape.

Then she smiled, even broader than anything before. What did it matter that she didn't have a recording? She'd be able to do it again, and again, even better each time.

But for right now, she needed to come down just a bit. Her throat felt the strain of the song; it might not be too wise to go for a repeat performance. However, keeping things in _A Room With a View_ mode, she might as well go for the opening aria, familiar though it might be. At least it was easy enough to sing. And the story behind it was interesting too: a rare departure from the otherwise lively tone of the performance; the heroine, singing to her father, told him that she loved her chosen so much that she would die without being allowed to be with him.

After two repetitions (and three tries of that sticky little part towards the end) she felt very good about her day, and started to wind down with some scales. Midway through one of her last, the phone rang in the kitchen, and she bounced up to get it.

"Hello?"

"Dr. Dale, sorry to disturb you at home, but you implied it was imperative that I call as soon as possible."

Well, God damn. "Yes, Mr. Winters, thank you for contacting me. I must admit I was confused when you missed our session. I hope you haven't been sick since Saturday?"

Perhaps not the wisest move she could make, bringing up a touchy subject. But she had to make him understand that she would not be cowed by him or guilt-tripped into anything that was inappropriate. Once again, she found herself deliberately goading him into an admission. Why did conflict work so well on him?

"No, I'm quite well."

No other answer? All right then.

"Well, was there a particular reason you found it necessary to let me wait for an hour after our session for you to show up?" (not strictly true, but he didn't have to know that) "Or did you not realize that what you did could be considered rude?"

"Ms. Dale," his voice was very tight, "I did not call to be insulted, passively or otherwise. I did not attend our session, and I apologize for that. I called to inform you that I think I had better find another doctor to handle my case."

This was slightly unexpected, if only because it was so very melodramatic, and the shock of it was enough to jar her out of her carefully prepared speeches.

She laughed.

"Is that your reaction to everything, Erik?" If he was going to change doctors, she might as well tell him what she thought, "I've noticed that pattern in your files. All of them, in fact. You're a tourist. All you want is to get under a doctor's skin, see what amusing—to your mind, that is—conclusions they can come up with and then move on."

"Ms. Dale—" he tried to interrupt, voice furious, but she cut him off.

"You know what I think? I think there's nothing wrong with you, besides what's generally wrong with everybody, boiling down to family issues or disappointed love, or rejection from a thousand small causes. I think you're bored. You're talented and gifted and you've reached the end of what you can do, and now you're bored. You refuse to try for more, so you find amusement in what you can ridicule from the hard work of people who want to help you."

Christine had to pause. Her lungs were still tired, and she was running out of air. Surprisingly, though there was silence on the other end of the line, she could tell he was still listening, even over the sound of her own deep breathing.

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

Even over the line, a chill shivered up Christine's back. If she had said these things in the same room with Erik, she had little doubt that he would have tried to strangle her. Her brain flashed back to the one incident of doctor-patient violence in his file; that incident in Philadelphia that had been settled out of court with a hefty payment to the doctor whose windpipe had been crushed.

The old Christine would have been PC, mellow, or backed down. Now, the implied threat in his voice was enough to fire her up.

"Maybe I don't. But maybe I'm right on and you know that I'm right. There's only one way we'd find out: you opening up long enough to let anybody in."

In a disconnected part of her brain, this conversation was starting to sound very much like a soap opera.

"And this, coming from you? The tightly-wound doctor with the stick up her ass?"

Christine gasped as his voice drove right on.

"Who was so distrustful and frightened of anything that didn't fit into her narrow little worldview? I know people just like you, Christine. You're a talented perfectionist who never wants to work for it, but who cannot be truly great without hard work and the threat of failure. You are too afraid to risk the failure, so you never try."

"I could say the same thing about you with rejection. You hide behind a _mask_, for Christ's sake, how do you expect anyone to—"

"Don't mention the mask!"

"How can I avoid it? You—"

Her voice seized up and she started to cough, feeling her throat spasm. Damn, she needed a drink!

She stumbled over to the sink and ran the tap, filling a tumbler and gulping the water down. Setting the glass heavily in the sink, she turned her back to the counter and breathed heavily.

"Ow."

"You've been overworking your voice, haven't you?"

The sudden change of his tone, from murderous rage to—dare she say it?—tender concern,, was disorienting. However, she'd started with honesty, and it would be shameful to finish her tirade with anything less.

"A little. I pushed myself a little too hard today at the beginning. But I got the song; I nailed the notes. One of my favorites, too…something I hadn't been able to do before. I'm getting better."

"I don't doubt it."

Christine's head drooped as she considered what she'd done in the last two minutes. Destroyed her client relationship, possibly put herself up for yet another inquiry into her methods, maybe even made Erik mad enough at her to make her a sequel to his Philadelphia incident.

Idly, she wondered how much the other doctor had gotten. Maybe enough so that she could quit the medical field entirely and focus on her music? But how would she sing with a broken windpipe?

She chuckled, bitterly. There was no sound from the other end of the line.

"Drink some more water. You need to keep yourself hydrated."

What was it about him, she wondered, that made her obey him whenever he spoke? She filled the glass twice more and emptied it quickly; her throat hurt when she swallowed.

"Do you think you have another song in you?"

"I was in the middle of my cool down when you called. I think I could manage another performance."

"Put the phone down on top of the piano. Let me hear you sing."

"I don't think that would be—"

"Let me hear you sing."

Christine sighed. Well, she supposed what she'd originally planned on doing, making friends with him on the basis of their musical backgrounds, was working. What was she doing? Were they still doctor and patient? What should she do?

"Christine, please. Let me hear you."

Her heart pounded, blood rushing through her ears. Hands shaking, she set the phone down on the kitchen table, and started to sing. Her voice didn't feel up to the aria from La Rondine, but she could still perform.

_O mio babbino caro  
Mi piace, è bello, bello  
Vo' andare in Porta Rossa  
a comperar l'anello!  
Sì, sì, ci voglio andare!  
e se l'amassi indarno,  
andrei sul __Ponte Vecchio__,  
ma per buttarmi in __Arno__!  
Mi struggo e mi tormento!  
O Dio, vorrei morir!  
Babbo, pietà, pietà!  
Babbo, pietà, pietà!_

At the end of the song, Christine's throat throbbed. She'd be lucky if she could speak at all tomorrow. After having another glass of water, she picked up the phone and listened to the hissing silence on the other end. She didn't even know if he were still listening, but she didn't want to break the silence.

After a long moment, he said, "Thank you."

And the line went dead.


	14. Dubious Permission

It was halfway through lunch on the following day before Christine managed to shake of the hazy mental state that had fogged her mind relentlessly since hanging up with Erik Monday night. And the only reason for the sudden clarity of her mind was the form of her boss, sitting right in front of her, eyeing with a dead-eyed stare the uneaten sandwich on her place.

"Christine, I'm starting to wonder if you aren't taking a leaf out of your clients' books. I can't remember seeing you have a decent meal for the last three weeks. Now you finish that sandwich and I'm going to get you a slice of chocolate cake, and I want to watch you eat them both."

The resident doctor chuckled, and picked up her sandwich for a hearty bite. Mouth half full, she said, "Just because you haven't seen me doesn't mean I don't eat."

"Oh, I have spies everywhere," Rebecca laughed, waving her hand. "Meg, for example, is an incorrigible gossip, and even though she's a brilliant surgeon, she can be slightly insensitive to shades of character or behavior. When even she says that she thinks you're not eating right, I have to sit up and take notice."

Christine finished chewing and swallowed, throat tight around her bite. "Geez, Meg. I wouldn't have thought she'd notice either."

"So what's going on? I can tell that something's eating at you. And…in all honestly, I think I can guess what it is."

"Maybe you can," she admitted, "but there are other parts that you might not be aware of."

"So, enlighten me. Christine, you're dealing with a rough client, at a time when other things are going on to put you under stress. By the way, Diana Knorr…you handled the situation brilliantly. When does she check in to the Bryant facility?"

"End of next week. Her parents still aren't handling it well. But she seems happy enough about it. It's really the only thing to do."

"And it's hard enough to deal with looking at your own failure without the parents fighting you at every step."

Christine's head snapped up at the word 'failure' and her pride rushed in a warm flood to sustain her. "I don't call it a failure. I did my best; but she needs constant attention and she needs to be away from her negative home life to really make a full recovery."

Rebecca smiled. "And that's the first show of spirit you've given me since we sat down today. It's good to see that you haven't lost it. Now, I don't call it a failure either. You did your best, and you're right; she needed more. Now that I've got you talking, though, why don't we discuss your other…complicated client?"

Under Rebecca's rather stern maternal eyes, Christine's mouth tightened and her stomach wrenched. It had been hard enough to fall asleep last night, what with her brain racing over all the ways her actions had changed their relationship, but she had hoped to have another few days to put her own mind in order before having to report her progress to her boss. As it was…

"Well…I…" she stammered off into an embarrassed silence, finally looking at Rebecca and spreading her hands in a helpless shrug.

"I know. It's hard to wrap your brain around that guy. I've been reading your reports as far as your progress goes, if you can call it progress, and the only reason I'm following up with you now is because I started to see a disturbing pattern."

Christine sighed. She knew what was coming; she had hidden nothing in her reports, and she had known that her train of thought would not make Rebecca happy.

"I can't believe that after I expressly warned you…I _told_ you that the last thing you wanted was Erik Winters in your head…that you brazenly theorized that the only way to get him to open up was to become his bestest buddy?"

Christine flinched. Rebecca's voice had scaled up and she didn't want to be seen getting a major wrist slap in the public cafeteria. Already some of the orderlies and doctors were starting to look conscientiously oblivious, almost studying the ceiling tiles to avoid hearing her get chewed out. Even Rebecca noticed it, and she backed off.

"Grab the other half of your sandwich and walk with me."

She felt vaguely ridiculous, walking through the halls with her angry boss, trying to swallow her sandwich so that she might have a chance to defend herself when they reached Rebecca's office.

She had taken her last bite when the two of them entered the office, and Rebecca curtly motioned her to a seat before closing the door with a sharp click.

"So what the hell are you doing? How far are you planning to take this?"

Christine had five seconds to decide if she could trust her boss. She weighed everything she knew of Rebecca and all she ever hoped from her career, and everything she knew of Erik. She took a deep breath.

"I don't know if I've already taken it too far. Before last night, our relationship was…nothing improper. I was holding the upper hand and trying to attract Erik to me…and I believe that it was working. But already there were significant drawbacks. I think that Erik was becoming…not attracted, but attached to me. We had certain interactions outside the doctor/patient setting that were completely coincidental and certainly not what I would have wanted."

Rebecca nodded, slowly. "You were drawing him in with your mutual appreciation for music. A good strategy, especially considering your backgrounds and natural talent. You're both frustrated virtuosos, in a way. Such a similarity would make therapy easier. What interactions outside the doctor/patient settings are you referring to? There's nothing in your notes."

"The first time," Christine said, shifting nervously in her chair, "was immediately after Carlotta's show at the Black Cat. I had to return for my purse, and Erik was there, giving a piano concert. I…rather injudiciously stayed to listen, and he saw me there, speaking to me afterwards and…asking me to dance."

One quick glance showed Rebecca's shoulders had ratcheted together as if by tension wires, and her lips were thin and pale. She looked down at her folded hands and kept talking.

"I declined, of course, knowing that it was entirely improper for us to have any relationship of the sort while we were still doctor and patient. He did not take it in the context I intended. I think he thought I was rejecting him personally, and as such, decided to avoid me. He declined to attend our appointment yesterday, and when I confronted him about the situation over the phone, we had a rather…heated argument."

"How heated?"

"I said some things that were probably too blunt. I accused him of being a tourist, of refusing to open up…all the things that every other doctor had noticed, but no one had ever outright said."

Rebecca snorted. "No, I don't believe anyone ever has. I can't really fault you for doing that; he has certainly deserved it. And maybe it would help shock him out of his habits. What did he say to that?"

Now she was starting to get really uncomfortable. "Well…he didn't really say anything. I had been practicing my singing before he called and I had a coughing fit. Being a singer himself, he knew what caused it. When I had stopped coughing he…" The blood rushed to her face and she couldn't go on.

"What?"

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

"Christine, I need to know what happened. Tell me or by God I'll yank him from your rotation and suspend you for a month."

She looked up from her folded hands and said, "He asked me to sing for him."

Rebecca's shoulders dropped and she leaned back in her chair, breathing deeply. "And did you?"

She nodded.

"Jesus. What on earth _made_ you? Do you realize…do you know what that's gonna do to your relationship?"

"I don't know why I did it…I guess I was…grateful." Christine's eyes were glazed with tears. "I hadn't sung since I was thirteen, and all of a sudden I have to bring it back to relate to a patient…who knows if I would have done it if he hadn't come into my life? I might still be the same person I was two weeks ago, scared and lonely and flinching at the future…and the past."

"Gratitude doesn't justify what you've done. This goes against every regulation in the book. And it's just plain stupid when in regard to him; he's not the kind of person to take any personal confession lightly. He'll remember what you've done till his dying day…or yours."

"I know that." Christine whispered. Suddenly, something plucked at her mind. "But how do you know that? What did you do to make you so afraid of him? How did your relationship change?"

"Can't you put it together from the files?" Rebecca asked bitterly.

"No. I couldn't tell anything, there's almost no detail. Which is confusing, because I've counseled other clients of yours and I know how much care you put into your personal notes. You warned me about him to begin with, but how did you know to do that? What happened between you?"

It was Rebecca's turn to be silent and abashed. Christine had never seen the look of haunted shame that ghosted over her superior's face as she composed the answer to her subordinate's question. The look of her hesitation and fear was enough to send shivers down Christine's spine.

"Like you, I thought the best way to get through to Erik would be to use my personal experience and history to create a bond between us. Unlike you, however, I have no musical talent. But I theorized that his mother—the formative person in his life, and who is still not a clear character to any doctor who has counseled him—was selfish to the point of abusive neglect."

Christine nodded. "I thought so too. From other notes, it is clear that he idolized his mother, but that she remained an unrealized figure, even to him. She was always away, on stage, in the social high life…and though he never mentions when the mask came into his life, I can't help but feel that her hiding him away was central to his identity dismorphia that lead him to assume his disguise."

"So you still think it's dismorphia?"

"Well…do you think it's physical? Do you think under that mask he's really deformed?"

"I don't know. It could sure as hell explain a lot."

"But I interrupted you. How does his mother come into your strategy?"

"Well, my mother was a similar figure. She was a genius immunologist, doing philanthropic work all over the globe and working with some of the highest medical minds. Naturally, all my life I wanted to follow her footsteps and be an academic doctor, helping to save lives with my medical developments. But as time went on, it became very clear to me that I just wasn't as smart, as intuitive as she was. I was a great lab technician, good at procedures and following orders and writing reports."

"But you weren't a genius. And you couldn't keep up with her."

"Exactly," she said, her lips twisting, "I couldn't keep up. And she wouldn't slow down, and I wouldn't have asked her to. I went into management, because I was better with mentoring people than she could ever be, but she never saw my skill. We've drifted so far apart that I don't even feel comfortable mentioning her anymore."

Christine reached one hand across the table, putting her palm above Rebecca's. "I'm sorry."

"It hardly hurts anymore. Anyway…I tried to use our similar positions—emulating our mothers, and trying endlessly for their approval—to create a rapport between us. He saw me coming a mile away; after all, you don't just start a conversation like that out of the blue, and he cut me off. This was when I'd been counseling him for about two months. He said…"

Her face went pale and she looked sick. Christine felt awkward, like she was trespassing on forbidden ground. Whatever had happened between her boss and her patient, Rebecca had buried it deep.

"He said there was no comparison between the two of us. He said that he surpassed his mother in all respects and had no need to idealize her. But that I…I was just an inept child nipping at the heels of a superior talent and was hiding my lack of talent under the guise of being a 'people person'. He said that even the thought of trying to compare the two of us by any means was an insult to himself."

Christine whitened under the shock of those comments and felt her blood boil. "Asshole."

"Putting it lightly. I don't know how I got out of that session without breaking down, and I had to go on leave for a week to get over it, besides immediately having him transferred to another doctor. So, I know the pain and heartbreak that he can inflict when you give him a personal way in. I don't want to see that happen to you. Especially since you just admitted to me that you're under stress and going through personal changes." Rebecca turned up her palm and interlaced her fingers with Christine's.

"So. It's your call. What do I do? Do I get him away from you? Or do you think you have a chance? I don't want to see you hurt. You've crossed a line. If it means getting closer to his cure, would you cross another? I'll look the other way for this one if you want me to. How many more times will I have to look the other way?"

"I don't know." Christine admitted. "All I know is that I want to get to the bottom of this. If I pass this up, he'll go to another hospital, another doctor, someone else to hurt, no one else to help. We're close and getting closer. If I can get through to him, I can find the answer. I need to help him; I need to find the answer."

Rebecca was silent. She folded her hands.

"Okay. Be careful, and get to it."

Christine stood and went to the door. Before she opened it, Rebecca spoke again.

"And Christine? Keep your methods to yourself this time; no detail in the reports. If you need to talk to anyone, come to me directly, and I'll give you my best advice."

"Yes ma'am."

She went through the door and shut it behind her, breath shallow and heart pounding. She had her boss's permission to continue on her path, but was it really what she wanted? How far would she have to go to help a man whom she wasn't certain even wanted help?


	15. Breaking Strain

Christine heard each and every one of his footfalls approaching the door of her office at the end of the hallway. Time slowed. She felt her heart pounding, blood racing through her jugular, around her lungs, to her fingertips and toes. Each breath she took went in her nose and out between her lips. She felt them tremble as she exhaled, and swallowed hard.

She never used to dread Mondays. But after nearly a week of anticipating this visit, the dread that twisted tighter in her gut as it drew nearer was now a mass of cords in her stomach that she would need a machete to chop through. It made everything, from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night, from eating and drinking to laughing with Meg and Carlotta—who could be surprisingly funny, given the proper topic—almost physically painful.

Whatever else would come of this meeting, Christine decided, she would be happy just to have it over and done with.

He stopped just outside her door. Was it possible that even he felt the dread of facing her? She felt a stab of vicious pleasure that this feeling might be almost as difficult for him to bear as well.

He knocked. She stood, and opened the door, gesturing him to his seat. The expression in his eyes made her shiver, but the exact nature of the shiver escaped her. She wasn't afraid of him—not exactly—and she didn't fear him hurting her, either physically or emotionally, though she would have been right to fear both.

Rather, it was the look of resignation in his eyes that chilled her. It was as though he had arrived at the answer before she even knew what the question was.

What implications did that question have for their future together? The uncertainty of that was truly frightening.

She smiled, her lips tight and plastic.

"Welcome back, Mr. Winters,"

"Dr. Dale," he answered, lips similarly tight, the words escaping like worms squirming out from underneath a rock. She had to turn away, facing the counter for a brief moment under the guise of reaching for her notepad.

By the time she turned back, her face was placid again.

"I'm glad you decided to come back," she said, biting back the urge to replace her last two words with "show up". Now was not the time to antagonize a patient she had decided to work it through with.

"I am…happy that one of us is," his voice was unusually uneven, as though he were choosing his words with uncharacteristic care. He sounded almost as though he didn't want to scare her away.

Was it possible that his attachment to her could lead him to seek genuine help for his problems?

Christine quashed the hope in her chest before it had time to take root. This meeting was for the purpose of reestablishing their rapport. She couldn't hop to conclusions like that; it would risk the tenuous threads that still bound them together.

The stress of the tension between them made the muscles of her face ache. Her shoulders slumped as she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and her breath was shaky as she sighed, blowing her wispy curls away from her face.

"Doctor-patient relationships are not easy," she said, voice flat and frank, "sometimes I have no idea what to say to make things better."

"You might start with an apology for what you said when last we spoke," the smoothness was back in his voice and he leaned forward to meet her eyes direct. She stared back and gathered her courage.

"I'm not so sure that what I said necessitates an apology," she worked hard to keep the self-defensiveness out of her tone, but it crept in as she continued, "maybe I'll hold off until I get one from you."

"Perhaps I'm wrestling with the same sentiment," he shot back, voice darkening.

The tension popped. Christine laughed.

"From the beginning, I was trying to get some genuine emotion out of you," she said, sitting back, "some true idea of what you were really after. Now I've got the emotion, but as to the other…I'm still totally in the dark."

His lips twisted and his voice bordered on harsh as he said, "Perhaps I only want what everyone wants; a little love and understanding?"

The bitterness was shocking.

Her lingering smile faded and she swallowed, hard. His eyes tracked every motion of her face and they mocked her for her fear.

The mockery steeled her, made her sit straight.

"Why not? Love and understanding are good things to have, centrally important things. For all that, though," her thoughts turned inwards, "they are surprisingly hard to get from people."

He snorted. "Most people could have them if they wanted. For others," and here he looked at her, hard, "it is not meant to be."

"By "others"," Christine rejoined, "do you mean yourself? Erik,"

Her sudden move forward drove him back in his chair, and her hand clutched empty air. She drew back, tried again.

"Erik, you are no different from other people. You deserve and can get the same things that they can. Everyone expects the same things from life."

She saw with dismay his retreat from her. One moment, his eyes and expression had been partially open and legible. The next, his frame drew tight, his hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and he was gone.

"It is alternately a compliment and an insult, Doctor, to equate me with the general herd of humanity. I am nothing," a jab of emphasis on the word, "like them."

"That's your story."

"It is no _story_!" he hissed, standing and turning violently to the window. The burst of motion shocked her into silence, but after a moment he filled it, voice cold and back to her.

"I am not a cursed prince, exiled from human emotion and affection until I've learnt my lesson, Doctor. I was never human. I was not born that way, not raised that way, not treated that way, not seen that way. I am…separate. Superior."

"You say it with pride," Christine wondered, rising slowly, "but look where your so-called superiority has gotten you. You have no relatives, no friends, no close contacts. Those who would like to get close to you are driven away by the things you say and do. I saw you with Helen, with the other musicians at the club. The doctors who got the closest to you were the ones you hurt the most."

She wished he would face her. Somehow, the fear spiraled tighter in her gut when she couldn't read the danger signs in his eyes. But it had to be said. She had to keep going.

"Your mother…she was always distant from you. She was all you knew, and she considered herself in the same way, didn't she? She was superior too. Too good for you, to spend time with you, her only son."

The muscles in his back and arms were drawn so tight that Christine was afraid his tendons would snap. Or that his resolve would break first, and she would find herself in the same situation as the Philadelphia doctor…or worse.

He could probably break her neck and get out of the hospital before anyone knew what had happened.

"Erik…superiority is not a bad thing. You are very smart, very talented. You are gifted beyond what most people are, myself definitely included. I am not trying to take that away. I am only trying to show you another path."

"A path that you yourself cannot tread?"

Each syllable was measured, flat, and even. He was giving her nothing.

She had to keep going.

"I am trying, Erik. You taught me something. You told me about myself, more about myself than anyone ever has. Each time we met, you gave me another way to see myself. Many of those ways were unflattering; I am a perfectionist who will not try for perfection, I am afraid, I am weak. I shut away the best parts of myself in the quest to be well-adjusted."

Was that a loosening she saw around his shoulders? Was he taking any of this in?

She had to keep going.

There was no moisture in her throat when she swallowed. She coughed twice, dryly, and went on.

"I took what you said, and I learned. And whether you meant better for me or not, whether you wanted to help me or not, I got better, and you did help. You don't have to care about me. You don't have to think about me at all, if you don't want to. But you have to listen to my words; you should take anything you can get, grasp at any straw, if you really want to get better."

There was silence, and Christine suppressed her coughs as she swallowed again. The blood rushing through her veins made her fingers shake, so she closed them over the armrests of her chair, feeling every groove in the leather with preternatural sensitivity.

She was done. It was up to him now.

He turned. The motion could only have taken fractions of a second, but she felt everything as though it were slow-motion. She shivered again, not bothering to hide the motion, as her eyes met his.

"What makes you think I need to "get better"?"

It was not a rhetorical question, although his voice mocked every word. She let a beat of silence pause between them, almost seeing her words as written out on a score and merely waiting for some unseen conductor to give her the cue.

"There is a darkness in you," her voice was low enough to be a whisper. She could not look at him as she finished. "And you want it gone…you would not be here if that weren't the case."

She paused, shook her head, and went on.

"But the darkness doesn't want to let you go. It wants to stay where it is, because it's comfortable and safe and alone. You will never be well until it's gone…gone, or under control."

"You…"

His voice was not angry, or irritated, or sad, or wistful. It was a strange mixture of all of these, guttural, almost like an animal's moan of pain, but she understood it. It gave her the strength to look up and rise to her feet.

"Let me try, Erik," she said, taking one small step towards him. "Just let me try to help you."

She could have said more, but she was biting her tongue, wanting him to take the necessary steps to meeting her on her terms. She wanted him on her side of the halfway mark. He needed to take that leap of faith.

"Let me teach you to sing," he rejoined, moving closer as well. The unexpectedness of the words and the movement made her breath deep and quickly. Her heart raced.

"I can't," the words tumbled out without her consideration. "You know I can't."

He shook his head and moved closer still. She could feel the warmth from his body and the chill from his hands as he moved to grasp the flesh just above her elbows. His smell was everywhere and she breathed deeper.

"Let me try, Christine," his use of her words was not mocking, this time. "You can go so far, you could go so high, I can hear it. You have the strength and skill and passion, I can hear it when you sing."

She was beyond words. She shook her head, slowly, then faster as he did not let her go. Her lips formed a silent 'no', but she couldn't give herself voice.

"Stop, stop…quiet," he commanded as he saw the signs of hysteria in her face.

She closed her eyes and felt his hands as the only things keeping her on her feet. Through the darkness, his voice pursued her.

"If we were not doctor and patient," he said, "if the situation were entirely different, if you were just a woman and I were just a man…Christine…would you say yes?"

Above all else, Christine needed honesty and truth from him. What had her father told her as one of the cardinal rules of emotional performance? You have to give it to get it, Christine. If you want people to feel sorrow, or joy, or exhilaration, _you_ are the origin and creator of that in your audience.

Gotta give it to get it, she thought.

She looked Erik in the face and said, clearly, "Yes."

He relaxed, hands gentling on her skin, more of a caress than a grip. She became painfully aware of it, especially when he smiled.

"Good."

She shivered once more as his smile grew broader, but this time she understood the full extent of the emotion that bloomed in her stomach as he said again;

"Good."

Her watch beeped, and her eyes flashed down. The appointment was over.

Erik drew back from her and nodded, once, before leaving the office.

The door clicked shut behind him, and Christine felt her knees give out. She was too far from the chair to land gracefully; instead, she slumped to her knees and then the floor, resting her head on her hands.

Nausea and pleasure roiled in her stomach—and lower—and she considered the full extent of what the hell she had just done.


	16. Christine Shrugged

It was Tuesday, 11:27 AM, and Christine counted twenty-nine hours and thirty-three minutes since she'd last slept. She blinked quickly, trying to sharpen the vision in her dry, itchy eyes, and took another swig from her cup of cold, bitter coffee. In three more minutes, she could go on lunch break; she'd hole up in the on-call room, usually reserved for doctors and surgeons, and try to grab a quick fifteen minute snooze.

She finished signing off on her prescription forms and filed them appropriately, nodding and making the necessary small talk with nurses and receptionists, dodging her colleagues with pale smiles and 'laters' when they asked her to eat with them. She reached the on-call room and collapsed on one of the sagging, homely-smelling cots. Two doctors lay sleeping, faces to the wall, one snoring in intermittent fits.

Perfect. Christine felt her eyes drifting closed, and she clutched her cell phone in her hand to make sure that when the alarm went off, she would definitely hear it. Just a few minutes of sweet peace, her body begged. Just a few moments when I don't have to think of…

Crap.

She rolled over and lumped the pillow up under her neck, throwing an arm over her eyes to block out the dim fluorescent lights. But her brain latched on to the thoughts she'd tried so hard to bury underneath the crushing weight of her exhaustion, and no matter how she flopped, rolled, or burrowed, she couldn't escape from them.

She sat up, putting both feet on the floor, and buried her head in her hands.

She hadn't said no. Why hadn't she said no?

Of course, Christine reminded herself, she hadn't said yes, either. Not in the way she was sure he was taking it, of course. He had phrased the question in a hypothetical situation, after all. That situation in no way resembled the one in which the two of them found themselves. No matter how much he might wish it otherwise, she _was_ his doctor and he _was_ her patient. That was not going to change.

She should have just said no. Having a body-dismorphic, borderline abusive man as your music teacher was never a good idea, after all.

But…but…

Her brain turned and twisted, picked at all the threads, unraveling the situation, the conversation, the relationship in so many different ways that Christine's tired consciousness was having trouble following them all. And she was so tired! She hadn't slept at all last night; after music practice (a dud, really; she couldn't stop thinking about what _he_ would think of her tone, expression, and passion) she had showered, changed into pajamas, read for her customary half-hour, and when she turned off the light, had promptly turned it back on.

Then followed a night of sleeplessness, punctuated by swigs of brandy and large helpings of self-recrimination.

What the hell kind of doctor was she? She knew better than this!

"Shit," Christine swore under her breath, giving the word as vitriolic a sound as she could manage without waking the other two in the room. Then, because the word made her feel momentarily stronger, she said it again.

"Shit."

A beat.

"Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_."

"Trying to sleep, here," a drowsy, irritated voice muttered, and one of the doctors rolled over to face her. His bright blue eyes blinked out from behind a bright fringe of hair, and he sighed.

"Rough day?"

"Yes," Christine said, the edge still in her voice. She sighed, rubbed her eyes for the thousandth time that day, and said, "Sorry. But yes. Shit day."

"I gathered."

She chuckled. "I guess you did."

He sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Want to talk about it?"

She contemplated the rough edges of her nails and how they blurred with the involuntary movements of her exhausted eyes. "No, not really. I just want to sleep it off…and clearly, sleep is the problem."

"Can't turn the brain off?" he asked, studying her face. When she shot him a tight-lipped, "no duh" expression, he chuckled himself. "Had any coffee then?"

""Great vats full," she said, "I was about to prescribe myself some caffeine pills."

"No way in hell would those help you sleep," he said, sitting up, "Valium?"

"Nah," she said, putting her hands on her knees and levering herself to her feet. "I'm just going to make it through and sleep straight through till next shift."

"Your brain isn't going to get any quieter unless you talk about what's bothering you," he countered. "You woke me up, so you owe me a cup of coffee; I'll throw in the listening for no charge."

She smiled, then paused. "Who _are_ you, anyway?"

He laughed, then stifled it as the other doctor gave a sharp snore and shifted restlessly. She liked the way his face opened up when he laughed.

"New transfer. Name's Raoul Cheney."

If she hadn't been so tired, she never would have said, "Raoul?"

He grimaced, and nodded. "Family name. And just for that, I don't want the cheap stuff. You're going to buy me a latte at the Starbucks across the street."

She smiled. "Aren't you on call?"

"My shift's over," he confessed, "but I was too tired to handle the drive home. I still haven't moved, and the commute's killer. I wanted to catch a nap, but I guess coffee will have to do."

"Fine," she said, the smile still stubbornly lurking about her mouth, "I guess I do owe you."

They were leaving the on-call room when he asked, "So who are you?"

"Christine. Christine Dale."

"Nice to meet you."

"You too." Christine said, holding the door open for him as they passed together into the sunlight. She closed her eyes against the pain and fished in her pockets to make sure she had her eye drops. "Sorry…I'm usually not that inconsiderate. It's just…I've got this patient who's been keeping me up nights."

"You know that that's technically not allowed," Raoul rejoined with a sly smile. "You could lose your license."

"Out of the gutter, please!" she laughed as they started across the street. "It's strictly professional."

"Then why's it keeping you up nights?" His voice was serious.

Christine sighed. "Because it's approaching that very fine line between professional and personal."

He looked at her for a long moment before they went into the coffee shop. "You'd better make mine a large. I think this could take a while."

Christine bought their lattes (Raoul protested that he'd been joking, but she did feel guilty for waking him) and they sat together at a sun-drenched table in the corner of the café facing away from the hospital. He fixed her with an even stare as he blew over his drink to cool it; she took a gulp right away, feeling the heat steady her racing thoughts.

"This guy is strange. I think he's got serious problems, but he's a tourist; you should see the guy's file. Six inches thick, I kid you not. He's seen more psychiatrists and doctors than you could find in this entire county. No one knows or can even begin to guess what his problem is."

"Maybe he doesn't have one," Raoul said, "maybe he's just giving you the run around?"

"I think that's part of it. I confronted him about being a tourist, and he says that I don't understand, that he's superior, blah blah blah." She snorted and shook her head, taking another sip. Suddenly, "Shit! I shouldn't even be talking about this with you!"

"Think about it this way, if you're worried about doctor-patient confidentiality," he said, smiling, "you're trying to get a second opinion on his diagnosis."

Christine thought a moment, then shrugged. It was as good an excuse as any; doctors always talked shop with each other, and though she tried to keep herself away from it, it was definitely relaxing to bounce ideas off your colleagues to get tips and suggestions, or encouragement.

It was even nicer in this case; Raoul was medical, so he would be very unlikely to have any contact with Erik and would have no reason to talk about this case with his own colleagues.

She went on. "Okay then. I think most of it's just an act; he wants help, but doesn't want to admit that he needs it. For whatever reason, whether it's because of his mask or his attitude, he drives people away. He's extremely lonely; I don't know that after his mother passed that he has had anyone close to him. Ever."

"He wears a mask?" Raoul's eyebrows rose almost to his hairline.

Christine nodded.

"Well, why?"

She shrugged. "No one knows. I sure as hell don't, except he gets very antagonistic when it's mentioned."

"Weird," he breathed, "except for burn victims, I've never had a patient wearing a mask."

"Me either," Christine said, "and it isn't a surgical mask. It's like a theatrical mask, you know, like tragedy and comedy. Nothing in his medical history suggests what it's for…none of his psychiatric files even _mentioned_ the mask. Granted, the files we have are pretty recent; only stateside, and only since he started seeking therapy. That still leaves the first thirty-some years of his life unaccounted for."

"So he could have a serious birth defect, then?"

"And that would explain a lot," Christine said, her fingers picking at the lid of her cup. "But there's no way to find out."

"You could dig through his insurance; try to find his birthplace and get his records from his hospital."

"I thought about that, at first, but there's too much red tape. He was born international, and exchange laws are pretty strict. I'd certainly need his consent for that, and that would just defeat the purpose."

Raoul nodded. "It's a rough spot; I can see why it's eating at you. But you said that this guy was getting into the gray area between personal and professional." He took a swig of his coffee while Christine squirmed, knowing what he was going to ask. "How did that happen?"

She sighed. Thank God she'd already had a little practice giving this speech. She gave Raoul the same initial digest of events that she'd given to Rebecca, watching his brow grow increasingly furrowed as she went on.

"Your chief is letting you run with this?" He asked, when she got to her first conclusion. "It seems like having a personal relationship with this guy is the first step to getting yourself hurt."

"Yes, but it's also possibly the first step to getting him to willingly accept treatment. And he did," she finished, as a triumphant conclusion.

He waited for her to go on. When she didn't, he said, "There's a 'but' there."

"Mind out of the gutter, please!" Christine said, trying to throw him off.

He didn't smile. She sighed.

"Yesterday, when we had our last session, he asked…" oh God, this guy was a stranger, a new colleague, how could she tarnish her reputation so quickly, "he asked if he could tutor me."

"In your singing?"

"Yes." Seeing the alarmed look on his face, she hastily added, "Of course I said no!"

He relaxed. Then, seeing the way her teeth worried her bottom lip, "If you said no, where's the problem?"

"I said no at first," she said. Now that the words were coming out, it felt incredibly therapeutic. "Then he asked me if I weren't his doctor and he weren't my patient, would my answer still be no?"

Raoul said nothing, waiting for her to go on. She bit her lip, stared down at her coffee, and continued.

"I couldn't say no, if that were the case. He has tremendous talent, and he could really help me, and I couldn't, in all honesty, say no. I want honesty from him, so I have to give it, right? I couldn't say no."

"You're his doctor," Raoul said firmly, "you didn't have to justify yourself to him. If this guy's been around as many physicians as his file says, he should know better than that. Don't you think he was just trying to get under your skin?"

Christine shook her head, as if warning away a troublesome thought. Then, on seeing his expression, she shook her head more firmly. "No. No, I don't think so. If he just wanted to insult me like all the rest of the doctors he's driven away, trust me, he's had more than one opportunity."

"Maybe he's playing a new game with you."

She shrugged; stirred her latte. "Maybe."

"Damn. No wonder you can't sleep. Want me to write you a prescription for some Ambien?"

She laughed. "No. Well, maybe if I still can't get to sleep tonight. After fifty hours, I would probably take you up on that."

"Then you should have my number," he said, fishing a pen out from his scrubs pocket. She must have looked surprised, because he followed up with a sheepish, "Yeah, that wasn't very graceful, but I was trying to figure out a way to work it subtly into the conversation and it just wasn't working."

She laughed again, but the sound was tinny and she felt her shoulders tighten; why did it always make her instantly nervous when a guy hit on her?

He slid the napkin with his number across the table and she folded it and put it in her pocket. A moment of awkward silence passed.

"So what do you think you'll do now?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to call him tonight and try to set the situation straight. Maybe I'm over-thinking this whole thing; maybe he understood that I was saying yes to his hypothetical situation. But I'll feel more comfortable if this whole thing is out in the open and we see things the same way."

"That's going to be super awkward," he said, voice sympathetic. "Good luck."

"Thanks," she said, draining the last of her latte. The caffeine made her heart race and she felt a little nauseous. She checked her watch. "My lunch break's over…I've gotta go."

"Yeah," he said, "I should probably be heading home too."

They both stood, Raoul stretching as he did.

Christine stole a shy glance at his broad shoulders. "It was nice talking to you. It helped."

"I hope so; you're in a tough situation. Like I said, good luck," he extended his hand and they shook. He held her hand in his as he said, smiling, "And let me know if you need that Ambien, okay?"

"Will do," she said, enjoying the feel of his strong hand holding hers; if felt like a lifeline across a raging sea.

Their hands touched for another moment, then dropped. She felt the loss of his warmth with disappointment, and tried to mask it with a bright smile. It felt hard on her face, and she let it fade as she said, "Well, I'll see you around."

"Count on it," he said. His smile looked much more natural.

She nodded, and turned to the door. They parted at the entrance; he walked towards his beat-up Camry, and she headed back inside.

Christine looked towards him as he pulled out of the parking lot; whatever else had come of that strange conversation, it had helped her come to a conclusion. She had to call Erik that night and set the record straight between them.

They couldn't have a productive relationship if one of them was expecting more from the other, after all.

But Raoul was right; it was absolutely going to suck.

Decision made, Christine went back inside. The voice in her head, the rapid current that weighed pros and cons and debated interpretations and shades of meaning, was finally quiet.

After the conversation was done, she'd be able to sleep.

Although, come to think of it, she'd probably be better off if she had a night of sleep first, and called Erik at work tomorrow.

Christine smiled, feeling her eyes grow heavy again.

Yes. Sleep tonight. Call tomorrow.


	17. Shadows Glimpsed

Despite her resolution, made both yesterday, during her horrible insomniac phase that left her blabbing her secrets to a total stranger, and the day before, when she'd stayed up all night thinking what sort of situation she'd gotten herself into, Christine found herself in yet another place that could be misconstrued by any coworker in her hospital. She was sitting in her car, hands tight on the wheel, staring at an old Victorian style house that was the address given on Erik's—Mr. Winter's—insurance card.

It had seemed so sensible at the time. Rather than call him on the phone and have to deal with the awkward silences that would inevitably ensue, she would just drive to his house, and the two of them would sit down and consider the misunderstandings between them in a mature, adult fashion.

Now that she was actually _outside his house_, that sensible resolution seemed like the stupidest piece of insanity that had ever flitted through her unreasonable brain.

Even so, she couldn't possibly bring herself to drive away. She was here, she had to talk to him today, and if she left now, she would probably give herself any number of chickenshit reasons to dodge making the necessary phone call.

No. She _had _to do this. Her hands tightened on the wheel, nails digging in to the padded plastic of it, but then she forced herself to let go. Her hand trembled as she reached for the door lock.

"God damn it!" she swore, almost yelling it in the confines of the car. What was it about this guy that made her second-guess herself at every single turn? She had to take control of herself, of the relationship, and tell him what was what. If she could get control of herself—as her vanity told her she _had_ been—she could certainly manage to control him.

Her stomach fluttered. Somehow she doubted it would be that simple, but it hardly mattered. This needed to be done; she couldn't go forward with this any more as things stood. The trouble sleeping, the constant distraction of her thoughts and emotions…it all linked back to him, and none of it was healthy.

She snapped open the door with a resolute jerk of her hand, and strode—almost ran, really—up the cobblestone walk, between neatly trimmed flowering hedges. She stole a quick glance upwards at the shaded high windows, and admired the neat paint job and well-tended gables. Whoever owned this house (she was half praying that the address was wrong) was certainly a careful, considerate owner.

The porch looked like a lovely little spot for relaxing and watching the world go by. Benches lined the wall along the house, and a two person swing creaked gently in the breeze. Christine took a moment to soak up the peace of the scene before turning and ringing the doorbell, listening to the chimes echoing through the three-story house.

She heard footsteps immediately, coming from a room to the rear right of the house; they were men's dress shoes that echoed sharply on the floor. Through the frosted window to one side of the door, she could easily see an unmistakable tall, broad shouldered figure, and knew that there was no chance that she had the wrong address.

Christine took three quick breaths, and forced her heartbeat to slow.

The door opened with a quick jerk, and though she had spotted and recognized him, it was clear from his sudden start that he had not seen her. His mouth was loose with shock, but it quickly curved into a welcoming—if somewhat smug—smile.

"Dr. Dale," he said, resting one elbow against the doorframe, his attitude much more relaxed than she had ever seen it, "to what do I owe the pleasure of such…personalized therapy?"

Her hands clasped together nervously before she controlled them and forced them down to her side. "I just thought that our last session ended on a confusing note, and I wanted to come by and clear some things up. I hope you don't mind my dropping by uninvited."

"No," his manner seemed almost surprised by the admission, "no."

He backed up and motioned her inside, closing the door after her. "May I offer you a cup of coffee, Doctor?"

"I thought we'd agreed to drop the titles, Erik," she replied, glad that his manner was putting her at ease. "I would very much like one, thank you."

"The kitchen is just ahead and on your left," he said, following her as she walked.

The kitchen was of a piece with the rest of the house; big, roomy, with plenty of counter space to work and several older appliances still holding their own against a new, state-of-the-art refrigerator tucked in the corner of the room. She particularly liked the look of the gas range; solid and squat, it looked like the inspiration for one of the characters from _Beauty and the Beast_, Disney-edition. She smiled involuntarily at the thought, and wondered if she should add the soundtrack to her repertoire.

Why not?

"Please, sit," he invited her, gesturing to a solid oak table ringed with four white lattice-backed chairs. "Do you take it with cream or sugar?"

"Both, please, and the sweeter the better," Christine replied, following his directions and sitting at the chair that faced the row of windows that filtered in dappled sunlight from the backyard. Her shoulders drooped with released tension; who knew that Erik would be so comfortable with intrusions into his private life? Nothing in the files had indicated that this sort of visit would be welcome; indeed, quite the opposite. Christine knew that she herself wouldn't be so pleased with someone just dropping by with not so much as a call or text.

So what was this casual greeting, this kind hospitality? Was it another aspect of his personality she was seeing here, or merely his reaction to…to her?

The latter idea made her stomach flutter with another emotion entirely, and another involuntary smile twitched around her mouth as she watched him wait on her, fetching a saucer and cup for her coffee, pouring it, and adding a few generous teaspoons of sugar plus a dollop of heavy cream. He brought it to the table and sat across from her, watching as she took her first sip. Heavenly.

"Thank you," she murmured, finding it so much easier to meet his eyes than formerly. "I really am sorry to drop by uninvited. I know that _I _wouldn't be too pleased to see my doctor at the door if I were enjoying a peaceful day off."

"Ordinarily I too would mind, Christine," her heart jolted as he used her given name, "I am trying to discover why your presence does not bother me as it should. Certainly you do not have good news for me," the smile around his mouth was rueful, if still pleasant.

"I—I suppose I don't," Christine admitted, finding it harder to come forward with the truth than she thought. She knew that what she had to say needed to be said; as two people locked into a professional arrangement, their personal preferences had to conform to expectations. She knew that it would be emotionally simpler for herself. She knew that she would feel more at peace if their relationship would just remain the relatively superficial one of doctor and patient, if she controlled the balance of power between them.

And yet…she had to heave a silent sigh of regret that he could not take her higher with her music, that she could not allow him to share his secrets and guide her towards what might be a bright future. It wasn't possible.

He seemed to read the thoughts flitting over her face, for he said, "I understand, Christine," his voice was gentle, gentler than she'd ever heard it, "I made you admit something yesterday that did not conform to the circumstances of our reality. You are my doctor, and I am your patient. I know that there are things that you cannot allow yourself to do. Do not fear that I will pressure you into any situation in which you are uncomfortable. I…"

His voice trailed off and for once, he dropped his gaze before making her drop hers.

"I would like…very much…for you to continue as my doctor."

She had meant her sigh of relief—if it did come—to be a silent one, but she couldn't control herself, and it was like the sound of a miniature whirlwind sweeping through the kitchen. Christine fell back in her chair and sighed again, feeling a true, unrestrained smile spread over her face.

The confusion on his face was almost enough to make her burst out laughing.

"I'm sorry," she said, reaching across the table impulsively to take his hand in hers, "but you have no idea how many ways I imagined this conversation going, and the response you just gave me was the one I most wanted to happen but thought was least likely. I didn't sleep for close to forty hours after we spoke last! You have no idea how many ways I imagined this ending!"

He seemed chagrined. "I know that the doctors who evaluated me previously did not have the most favorable idea of what I was, but I am sorry that you thought I was as unreasonable as that."

Christine was going to start in with a soothing platitude, but halfway through opening her mouth, she stopped. Her teeth came down on the inside of her lip, and the jolt of pain sharpened her focus. Did she dare?

"You're not the easiest person to know, Erik," she began again, "if that hasn't become clear to you by now. This is the closest and most comfortable I've felt with you since we've met. Before, it was either anger or sarcasm that you reacted with, and neither of those things are likely to endear anyone to you."

"To be fair, you _were_ trying to provoke an emotional response. Perhaps I was only trying to fulfill your expectations?"

"See, there goes that sarcasm again," Christine exclaimed. "It's the quickest defense you have, and an ordinary person would back off or change the subject."

"And you are not ordinary?" The words were sarcastic, but the tone of his voice was…almost admiring, to her ears.

Christine chalked that last thought up to her innate optimism. "I'm a masochist," she said cheerfully, taking another sip of her coffee, "why else do you think I went into talk therapy?"

"And there's _your_ sarcasm defense," he replied, leaning forward with the glint of conflict in his eye. "Anything that alludes to the decisions that lead to your present life, you dodge. I know it has to do with your father."

"Just as with your mother," Christine countered, feeling her own blood rise with this challenge. "She is your trigger, just as my f-father," damn it, her voice stumbled over the word, "is mine. It sounds like we could both come clean."

She hoped that the comparison would help him along, make him more comfortable and willing to reciprocate. To her surprise, he took an entirely different view of her words.

"'Coming clean' implies that some sort of redemption is possible," he said, leaning back in his chair and gaze drifting towards the windows, "you have far more faith in that idea than I."

"What have you done," Christine wondered, voice pale, "that you consider yourself unable to be saved?"

He did not answer. Christine felt the muscles in her back and shoulders wind tight again, and she gripped the edge of the table as her adrenaline level rose and tried to force her to run. His lips tightened and his fist clenched slowly…just as slowly, he turned his head to meet her eyes again.

"There are places for people like me in this world, Christine," his use of her name, not her title, in speaking so personally, was an encouraging sign therapeutically but personally terrifying, "there are levels of society where I am _welcomed_," he spat the word. "But they are not such places as a girl like you would even know about."

Her throat was dry and her breath came short. Suddenly, this whole thing seemed far over her head; she was a girl, just a child, like he said, and if half of what he was implying was true, she didn't need to call for a second opinion, she needed to call the goddamn _police_.

But this…this was a _truth_ he was telling her. She was finally getting to the heart of him, she felt it in her bones, and if she backed down now, he would have every right to close himself off again.

She swallowed. "I may not understand, Erik," his eyes did not leave hers, but for once she was not intimidated; their intensity gave her the courage to continue, "I may not be able to understand. There are some experiences that cannot be fully shared, no matter how many words are used. All I can promise is that I will try to, if you want me to understand. When you talk, I will listen. And I will do my best to understand."

"But you don't," his earnest tone reminded her almost of a young boy's; the dry formality was gone, and instead there was nothing but honest desire for her comprehension, "You don't understand. I don't talk about my past because I don't want to think about it. _I_ don't want to understand it, and I certainly don't want _you_ to understand it. I only want to be a different person. Can't the past just die?"

Christine shook her head slowly, longing to come around the table and put her arms around him and rock him like the little boy he seemed to be just then. Her eyes clouded with sudden tears, but she kept them from running down her cheeks by refusing to blink. She kept her eyes on him as she said,

"It never does. It can't. And even if you bury it, it just finds another way to come to the surface and drag you back down. I thought I'd killed my past and buried all the memories of my father. But then you came along," she watched with curiosity as he almost flinched back at her words, "No, Erik, it's all right—you came along and brought them all back up again. I thought I was going to die; I didn't know what to do, or what I'd even been _doing_ with my life. But I faced it; I faced those memories and accepted them."

With a jerk of her head, she forced the tears back down. Christine slid her hand across the table top and let it rest there, palm up. After a long moment, he put his hand in hers, and their fingers locked around each other's wrists, almost as if Christine were trying to pull him back from a cliff edge.

"You are so much stronger than I am," she went on. His hand tightened around hers. "If I can face my memories, I know you can too."

There was silence in the kitchen, broken only by the rhythm of their breathing; deep, even, and completely in time.


	18. Walk the Fields, Under the Open Skies

Christine's arms were tired, stretched as they were across the tabletop, but the warmth of feeling his arms gave her strength, even though his hands and fingers were, as ever, deathly cold. They hadn't spoken in at least five minutes; he had not met her eyes for that whole time. She was not afraid to move. It was just that the moment was so…what?

_Holy_, her mind supplied. The muscles in her arms shook, trembling, but the weight they bore and the strain they carried was only partially physical. The tension in the air, the expressed emotion and the hints of real trauma that lay in his past…it was a weight of responsibility that bore down on her nerves and made her long for escape.

He was relying to her to be strong, to bear up under his weakness. She could do this. She had to do this.

His fingers tightened around her wrists, as though sensing her internal struggle. She squeezed his in answer.

"I'm here, Erik,"

She had not realized she'd spoken aloud until his head jerked up.

"I'm here," she repeated, squeezing his wrists again in encouragement, "I won't go anywhere."

The two thin lines of his mouth tightened, and he looked off to the side. The motion of his head was sudden and sharp, and Christine could tell that her words had shattered the moment. She bit her tongue and kept her hands where they were. God, she had a lot to learn as a therapist.

"I'm sure you have places to be," Erik said, not looking her in the eye as he let his fingers slide through hers. As the last cold digit left her palm, Christine felt more a pang of regret for its loss than relief at the way her arms were finally free to stretch and move. She felt somewhat at a loss.

She settled for nodding slowly and getting to her feet. The motions felt wrong, somehow; at odds with the cool stillness of the previous minutes. She was pulling back again, when he'd done the work and moved forward.

But how much could she lose herself to this? The question was one she posed to herself at the start of each professional relationship, but she had never had as much difficulty answering it as in this particular case. Very few other patients made her agonize like this, made her think of them day and night. Yes, Erik was special, yes, she wanted to give him special treatment; but what exactly did all that mean in practical terms?

Despite the resurgence of her artistic side, Christine Dale was still eminently practical. She gathered her bag from where it hung on the back of her chair.

"May I show you one thing before you go?"

She turned back to face him, but his eyes resolutely refused to meet hers. He still stared through the kitchen windows, trying to keep his tone casual. Christine could tell, however, how much her answer meant to him.

"Of course, Erik," she said.

He rose in one smooth motion and took her by the hand. Her body relaxed as she felt the familiar comfort of his grip. She needed no encouragement to follow his lead.

He led her up the winding staircase in the middle of the house, past the second floor up to the third level of the building. Little oddly shaped windows looked over the forest behind the house, and Christine smiled at the sensation of being a bird among the branches.

They crossed the landing and Erik opened a pair of double doors into a broad room. Christine gasped; the space must have taken up at least half the floor, and the entire thing was flooded with gorgeous late-afternoon light. The very dust motes in the air gleamed gold as they twisted in the air, flirting with the breeze from the open windows.

The air was still cool, and Christine shivered slightly; even in June, New York took a little while to warm up. The sun however, warmed the space well.

Erik was a careful and considerate owner, she reflected. Certainly if he wanted to leave the heat off, he knew that the air temperature would not harm his instruments.

The room was a shrine to music; wherever she turned, she saw something beautiful. Three large pieces dominated the room; a spindly harpsichord that looked like it had made the crossing from Europe more than once in its long life, an organ that looked salvaged from the ruins of a cathedral, and a piano, its wood so brilliant and gleaming black that it served as a mirror for the sun, reflecting its light in a hundred rainbows across the ceiling and floor.

In between these giants stood harps of several different sizes and varieties, cellos and basses resting on upright stands, tables which housed violins and violas, glass cases that stored flutes, piccolos, and all manner of wind and brass instruments…everywhere she looked, Christine saw something new.

She breathed deep, mouth open in wonder. Her hand ghosted over the surface of a gorgeous old violin; the wood's surface showed what must have been centuries' worth of wear from careful fingers. The neck of the thing almost bore the imprints of its owners…she shivered as she saw where they had left their marks.

It was spectacular.

"Erik," she breathed, looking back at him with her face alight, "this is…incredible."

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked. As he spoke, he didn't look around the room at these proud, regal tools of artistic beauty. He looked directly at her. She felt a tremor run up her spine at the look in his eye; she shivered and turned away, masking her sudden uncertainty by taking a closer look at a glass case that housed museum-worthy flutes and recorders.

"Where did you get all these?"

"Most of them were left to me by my mother," she could not face him as he spoke, but in the glass of the case, she saw him moving closer to her, "she was an avid collector. But I have made my own contributions to the collection, certainly. In fact…"

The long line of his chest came up suddenly against her back and her breath came short at his closeness. Did he know what that did to her? Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the raised corner of his lips. Bastard. Of course he knew.

The fact that he was being snarky and taking advantage of her being off-balance—again—gave her the bravado to face him as he removed an old flute from the case.

"This is one of my favorites. I found it moldering away in a cathedral in Ireland; no one had played it for fifty years. But the tone of it," his lithe fingers tightened the instrument along its joints, the movements sure but loving, "must be heard to be believed."

He moved to replace it in its holder.

"No," the word was out before she thought, "play something."

He smiled, and she smiled back at him, planting her hands on her hips.

"Yes, your evil scheme worked," she said, watching with pride as his smile stretched almost to become a grin, "but my resolution holds; I'm not opening my mouth."

"Very well," he said, almost laughing the words, "I will not test the strength of your resolve. But please," he motioned her to the piano bench, one of the few seats in the room, "relax."

She sat on the bench, letting her fingers drift over the smooth, sun-warmed wood. She wondered how many times he had sat where she was; in how many moods of joy, despair, or aggravation he had taken this seat to drain himself of emotion?

His history would weigh heavily on the instruments he owned; who would inherit his burdens when he passed?

She shook these thoughts off as he sat a few feet away from her, perched comfortably on the harpsichord's stool. He loosened his shirt's cuffs and rolled down the sleeves. She followed the motions of his mouth—too closely, she was sure—as he moistened his lips and set them to the instrument.

But when he started to play _Greensleeves_, her brain shot so far away from him—and herself—so quickly that her hands tightened against the bench's edge as though her grip could prevent her from losing her grasp on her mind.

Shivers raced up her spine, her arms; she felt her lips shaking. The tone, he'd said—yes, the tone was true and glorious, like the wind whistling through a cathedral at night, or moaning between the gravestones in a moss-covered churchyard—but it was more than that. In her fancy, she saw the first owner of the flute, wandering over the green hills of Ireland and playing away his loneliness as he lay out under the stars…

Then the second owner, a pious man who gifted his father's flute to a young altar boy in the church, who took the instrument and charmed the congregation with it every Sunday morning, in the gray pre-light of dawn when each man and woman in the crowd felt their souls lift and tremble, yearning towards the God who was made tangible to them through each shimmering note…

Down through the years, this flute had traveled. Down the years, through the hands, catching memories and history and dragging them along with it until finally it rested in Erik's hands and played to her…would she too, in this moment, be sealed in its black resin skin and carried forward in time?

The hard edge of the bench, pressing the blood out of her shaky fingers, brought her back to reality. She breathed again.

_Your imagination's running completely away with you, Christine, _she told herself firmly, _get a grip._

She did. After the first surge of enchantment, Christine managed to listen to the rest of the song and appreciate it merely for Erik's artistry and the instrument's divine tone.

As the last notes faded, Erik lifted his head slowly, as a diver comes to the surface after an underwater sojourn. His eyes seemed heavy lidded as he turned his gaze back towards her. She felt the meaning behind his glance and felt her face flush, sudden and uncontrollable.

"That was beautiful," she said, wanting nothing more than to follow that with 'I have to go'. "You play so well."

"I have to," he said, keeping his eyes on her as he continued, "if I want to be the worthy owner of something such as this."

He held the flute lightly between his strong, masterful fingers. Christine stared at them, her gaze sliding slowly from the long bones to the defined knuckles and finally to the callused, rounded tips. She swallowed.

"I have to go."

"Yes," he said, standing suddenly. The spell between them was not so much shattered as dropped; she could tell that he had seen her first wild reaction to his playing, and she knew he would not forget it.

She was grateful that he was pretending to ignore it, for her sake. It was a generous thing that he probably would not have done during their first few weeks' acquaintance.

She waited for him to replace the flute in its case and followed his lead out of the room. On the landing, she paused for him to close the doors of the music room, but then she led the way back down to the first floor—out of the treetops—and to the front door.

Once again, she had no idea what to say.

"I'm glad," she began, and stopped.

The corners of his lips twitched, but he was not laughing at her, or mocking her. The expression only seemed…she could not tell.

"Myself as well."

She walked to the curb and got in the car, looking back only once she was turning the key in the ignition.

He lifted his hand in salutation as she drove away.


End file.
